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NOTE. 

This volume is a reprint of some of the chapters 
selected from " Apostles of Mediaeval Europe," by 
the Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D. 



MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 
OF MEDLEVAL EUROPE 



BY TBB 

REV. G. F. MACLEAR, D.D. 

Warden of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, and 
Lata Head Master of King's College School, London 



TSitto York 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1897 






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MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 
OF MEDIAEVAL EUKOPE. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE MISSION FIELD OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

First, it will be well to notice some of the 
more striking features, moral and religious, 
of the nations which awaited the missionary 
zeal of the Christian Church. As an outline is 
all that can possibly be attempted, we may, 
sinking minor divergences of race, and regard- 
ing them solely in their social and religious 
aspects, arrange these nations under the several 
groups of Celts, Teutons, and Sclaves. 

1. The Celtic races had, except in Ireland 
and Northern Britain, to a great extent become 
amalgamated with the institutions, feelings, 
and social life of their Roman conquerors, and 
had learned to ascribe to their deities the 
attributes of the gods of Rome. We are there- 
fore hardly concerned with their religious 
creed, except so far as they formed an ad- 
vanced outpost among the Western nations, 
and, when evangelized by Christian mission- 
aries, became, in their turn, signally ardent and 

5 



6 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

successful preachers of their newly-adopted 
faith. 

The Commentaries of Caesar give us the 
earliest sketch of the social and moral features 
of the Celtic character. Daring his campaigns, 
which lasted upwards of fourteen years, and 
cost him two millions of men, this great com- 
mander had ample opportunities of becoming 
acquainted with them, and he has described 
with minute accuracy their gigantic stature, 
fair complexions, enormous muscular strength, 
and love of personal decoration. 1 

Fond of war, hot of temper, .-but simple and 
void of malice, they knew little of that per- 
sonal liberty, which was the proud charac- 
teristic of the Teuton. While the meanest 
Teuton was independent and free, the lower 
orders among the Celts were little better than 
in a state of slavery, for all real freedom and 
power centred in their chieftains. 

The same great warrior has given us the 
fullest account of the Druids, the all-powerful 
religious order of the Celtic tribes. Under 
their various divisions, they were at once the 
ministers of a theocracy and the judges and 
legislators of the people. Enjoying an immu- 
nity from service in the army and the obliga- 
tion to pay taxes, they instructed the youth 
of the nation in the mysteries of learning, 
the majority of which they veiled in inviol- 

1 Caesar, "De Bel. Gall.*' vi. 13. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 7 

able secrecy, and did not suffer to be com- 
mitted to writing. The chief doctrine, 
however, that they did impart, seems to have 
been the immortality of the soul, or rather its 
transmigration to another body, to which was 
added instruction in the nature and motions of 
the sun, moon, and stars, and the power and 
greatness of the immortal gods. 

Though proscribed by successive Roman 
generals, and nominally exterminated in Britain 
by Suetonius Paulinus, Druidism lingered on 
for centuries in Ireland and the Scottish High- 
lands. In the "Book of Armagh" the monarch 
of Ireland is represented, at the arrival of St. 
Patrick, as having in his service his soothsayer 
and magicians, his augurs and diviners. A 
member of the same order withstood with the 
utmost pertinacity the first preaching of St. 
Columba in Scotland, 1 and in the "Book of 
Leinster" we find an early Irish king asking 
the Druids to ascertain for him by their arts 
the events that were to happen to him during 
the ensuing year. 

Almost of equal rank with the Druids was 
the Ollamh, the "bard" or "gleeman," and 
only a step lower stood the Seanchaidhe, the 

1 See Adamnan's " Life of St. Columba, " by Reeves, 
p. 74 ». In the Irish MS. of St. Paul's Epistles at 
Wurtzburg the gloss on Jannes and Jambres, in 2 
Tim. iii. 8, is duo Druid en JEgyptinci In an ancient 
hymn, ascribed to St. Columba, we find the expres- 
sion, " Christ the Son of God is my Druid." Miscell. 
Irish Arch. Soc. i. 8. 



8 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

" historian " or "story-teller." The person of 
the former was regarded as inviolate. With 
the princes and the Druids, he took part in the 
great national assemblies; he ranked next to 
the monarch himself, had a fixed title in the 
chieftain's territory, besides ample perquisites 
for himself and his attendants, and by carrying 
or sending his wand to any person or place he 
conferred a temporary sanctuary from injury 
or arrest. 

As to the Celtic religious belief, however 
modified it may have been by subsequent con- 
tact with Roman or Teutonic systems, it is 
clear that in its original form it was essentially 
the worship of the powers of nature. Highest 
in the Celtic pantheon was the sun, the ' ' life 
of everything/' the "source of all being, ,, who 
shared the devotion of his worshippers with 
the moon and stars, with genii of the hills and 
the valley, of the grove and the spring. The 
sacred principle of fire also received special 
adoration. The season of the vernal equinox 
was ushered in by the sacred festival of the 
Bel-tine, or ''the lucky fire," and was cele- 
brated with those peculiar rites, which once 
from every hill-top in Ireland welcomed the 
return of the solar beams and the banishment 
of winter's gloom, but now linger only in the 
popular sports of May Day. 

The records of missionary labour in Ireland 
and Scotland do not make any special mention 
of those numerous gods, which Caesar describes 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. \) 

as worshipped in Gaul, and to which he has 
transferred the attributes of the deities of 
Rome. But the apostle of Ireland is repre- 
sented in the earliest annals as recalling his 
converts from the worship not only of spectres 
and genii, but of idols also, the greatest of 
which, the image of Crom-cruach, ! stood on 
the plain of Magh Slecht, " the Plain of Ado- 
ration, " in the county of Cavan, and was the 
chief object of native worship till its destruc- 
tion by him. 

As a rule, however, the original form of the 
Druidic ritual was marked by much simplicity. 
The shadow of the sacred grove, or the wide- 
spreading oak with its mystic mistletoe, was 
the Druid's temple ; the hill-top, with its 
cromlech or altar-stone, his nearest approach 
to architecture ; while the triple procession 
round the sacred circle from east to west, the 
search for the mistletoe on the sixth day of 
the moon, the sacrifice of the milk-white bull, 
and the usual methods of augury and divina- 
tion, constituted the chief portion of his sacred 
rites. But at particular times the earnest 
craving to appease offended powers, or the 
dread of sudden danger, or the outbreak of 

1 " Supposed to have been also termed Crom-dubh, 
4 the black stooping-stone, 1 and to have given rise to 
the name of Cromdubh or Cromduff Sunday, by 
which the last Sunday in summer, or the Sunday 
next before All Saints' Day, is commonly known in 
Ireland.' 1 — Todd's " Life of St. Patrick, 1 ' p. 128. 



10 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

some terrible pestilence, suggested the offer- 
ing of those sacrifices of human beings which 
Caesar has described, and which long contin- 
ued to be the custom of the Celtic tribes. 

2. With this outline of Celtic superstitions, 
we must pass on to the Teuton. Under this 
generic name we include not only the inhab- 
itants of the extensive region ; which, bounded 
by the Baltic on the north, the Rhine on the 
west, the Vistula and Oder on the east, may 
be called, with tolerable accuracy, the Euro- 
pean home of the Teutonic tribes, but also 
those hardy Northmen, whose gaudy but ter- 
rible barks bore them, during the eighth and 
ninth centuries, from their homes in Denmark 
and Sweden to be the scourge of the European 
shores. 

Differ as these undoubtedly did in minor 
points, in all the essentials of their moral and 
religious character they were similar, and for 
our purposes it will suffice to speak of them 
together. 

The earliest Teutonic doctrine, then, appears 
to have recognized one Supreme Being, whom 
it represents as Master of the universe, whom 
all things obey. 

"Who is first and eldest of the gods?" it 
is asked in the Edda, and the answer is, " He 
is called Allfadir in our tongue. He lives 
from all ages, and rules over his realm, and 
sways all things, great and small ; he made 
heaven and earth, and the lift — that is, the 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 11 

sky — and all that belongs to them ; and, what 
is more, He made man, and gave him a soul 
that shall live and never perish, though the 
body rot to mould or burn to ashes. His is 
an infinite power, a boundless knowledge, an 
incorruptible justice. He cannot be confined 
within the enclosure of walls, or represented 
by any likeness to the human figure." 1 

Such appears to have been the primitive 
faith. Allfadir would be a name naturally 
dear to a people which as yet had hardly 
passed the limits of the patriarchal state, 
amongst whom every father of a family was 
at once a priest and king in his own house. 

But the idea of a pure spirit was too refined 
to retain any lasting hold on the mind and 
conscience. It lost its original distinctness, 
and retired more and more into the background, 
surviving only as the feeble echo of an older 
and purer creed. Just as the Aryan in cross- 
ing the Hindu Alps was spellbound by the 
new and beauteous world into which he was 
transplanted, so the Teuton, in the course of 
his migrations towards colder climes, bowed 
down before the wild and overbearing powers 
of nature, and then out of nature- worship 
arose an elaborate form of hero-worship, the 
adoration of the conquerors of nature, that is, 
of man himself, with his virtues and his 
vices. 

! l See Dasent's " Norsemen in Iceland," p. 187, and 
compare Tacitus, *' Germania," chap. ix. 



12 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

From the Invisible One emanates, so thought 
the Teuton, an infinite number of inferior dei- 
ties, whose temple is every part of the invisi- 
ble world. Hence nature was to be venerated 
in all her forms and manifestations. The 
heavenly bodies, the sun and moon and stars ; 
the earth, with its trees and springs, its foun- 
tains and hills ; the sea, with its ebb and flow, 
its storm and calm ; — all were regarded with 
deepest reverence. And since all nature was 
but an organ and instrument of deity, it was 
of the utmost importance to pay attention even 
to the most indifferent phenomena. Nothing 
was too trifling. The quivering leaf, the crack- 
ling flame, the falling thunderbolt, the flight 
or singing of birds, the neighing of horses, 
man's dreams and visions, even the movements 
of his pulse, all needed attention, all might 
give some sign from the other world. 

Hence the peculiar regard that was paid, 
amongst all the Teutonic nations, Gothic, 
Saxon, and Scandinavian, to oracles and div- 
inations, to auspices, presages, and lots. 
Hence the functions of the prophetess and the 
sibyl, of the enchanter, the interpreter of 
dreams, the diviner by offering-cups, 1 or the 
entrails of victims, or human sacrifices. Hence 
the raisers of storms, the Runic sticks, and all 
the usual instruments of heathenism for ex- 
ploring the secrets either of the past or the 

1 Comp. Gen. xliv. 5. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 13 

future. Up sal was the Teutonic Delphi, as 
famous for its oracles as for its sacrifices. 
Here might be found diviners, both male and 
female, who could supply runes to secure vic- 
tory in the battle, to preserve from poison, to 
heal bodily infirmities, or to chase away mel- 
ancholy. 1 Thus all nature had a voice which 
could speak, and to which all men were bound 
to hearken. The skies, the woods, the waters, 
were the Teuton's books, his oracles, his di- 
vinities. 

But nature-worship did not satisfy. The 
Teuton ceased in time to quail before her 
mighty powers. He learnt to defy the wind 
and storm, the frost and cold. So nature- 
worship became entangled with a compli- 
cated system of human gods. 

The first and aldest of the gods, we saw, 
was Allfadir, Odin, or Wotan. But in pro- 
cess of time the great Father was resolved 
intc his attributes. His power was divided 
amongst a number of inferior divinities, 
sprung from himself, to each of whom he had 
imparted a portion of his greatness. Hence 
the twelve iEsir and the twelve Asynar. 
Moreover, as in the Hindu mythology, Brahm 

i The " Indiculus Superstitionum " and the Lives 
of the Mediaeval Missionaries afford an insight into 
the various kinds of Teutonic sorcery. Comp. the 
letter of Boniface to Cuthbert, Ep. lxiii. ed. Migne, 
and the appendix to Kemble's "Saxons in England," 
vol. i. 



14 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

is almost forgotten before Vishnu, or the more 
terrible Siva and Kali, so Odin shared the 
worship of his votaries with Thor the 
" Thunderer," the " chief of the gods in 
strength and might ; " with Tyr, the Teutonic 
Mars, the " bravest of all the gods, the giver 
of victory, and god of battle ; '* with Freyr, 
the god of fertility, of seed-time and harvest, 
of marriage and f ruitf ulness ; with Baldr, fair- 
est of all the sons of Odin, the Phoebus Apollo 
of the Teuton, " the restorer of peace, the 
maker-up of quarrels ; " while Frigga, Odin's 
wife, presided over the sweet spring-time and 
the rising seed, with her attendants, Fulla, 
"plenty," Hlin, "warmth," and Gna, "the 
sweet and gentle breeze/' 

The iEsir and the Asyniar were the blithe, 
beneficent powers. But the Teuton could 
not look out upon the natural world, without 
tracing in its contradictory phenomena the 
operation of other powers, dark . ,nd sinister, 
which had brought about a convulsion in 
high places, and with whose machinations 
the human race had become entangled. Hence 
the belief in monstrous fiends and giants, 
cruel, powerful, and inexorable. Chief of 
these was Loki, the "calumniator and back- 
biter of the gods," "the grand contriver of 
deceit and fraud." In his form he was fairer 
than any of human mould, but his mind was 
evil, his nature feeble, and " he cheated in 
all things, and in the arts of perfidy and craft 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 15 

he had no equal." Once the friend and asso- 
ciate of the iEsir, united with them in sacred 
brotherhood, he fell like Lucifer from his 
high estate, and terrible was his threefold off- 
spring, — the first, Fenris-wolf ; the second, 
Midgard's worm ; the third, a daughter, Hel, 
the goddess of death. These are the enemies 
of the iEsir, the authors of disquiet and strife, 
and with their entrance into the Teutonic and 
Scandinavian mythology the older and milder 
religion assumed a more warlike and savage 
character. Instead of ruling the world in 
peace, the " Father of gods and men" became 
Valfadir, the god of battles, the "terrible and 
severe god," who prepared for the warrior the 
feast in Valhalla. 1 

Such, roughly and briefly, were the out- 
lines of the Teuton's creed, to which every- 
where and at all times he clung, and for 
which he died, for it was " the transfigura- 
tion of the natural man, with all his virtues 
and vices, with all his feelings, and passions, 
and natural affections." * Hence the free and 
easy way in which the Teuton regarded his 
gods. If he honoured them right, and offered 
the due sacrifices, he claimed his reward. If 
he considered himself unfairly treated, he 
openly reproved them, forsook their worship, 
and destroyed their temples. 

1 See Dasent's "Norsemen in Iceland," p. 191 f 
u ProseEdda,"p. 446. 
a Dasent's M Burnt ttjal," I. xvii. 



16 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

For though it may be true that in early 
times the Teuton knew nothing of temples 
made with hands, that the Deity, whom no 
enclosure could contain, or mortal form rep- 
resent, received the adoration of .his wor- 
shippers in the obscurity of the wood, or on 
the lonely mountain-top, yet without doubt 
the introduction of an elaborate form of 
polytheism brought with it in time a more 
elaborate form of external worship. 

The transition from the sacred oak-grove to 
the hill altar and the cairn was easy. Equally 
easy the transition thence to the temple of 
wood, with its nave and shrine, its "holy 
place," and its "holy of holies." In the 
Norse temples, formed doubtless on a plan 
common in earlier times, the images of the 
gods stood on a platform in a shrine. In 
front of them was the altar, on which burnt 
the holy fire. On it, too, was laid the great 
ring, which, stained with the sacred blood, 
was placed in the hand of all such as were 
about to take any solemn oath. Hard by also 
was the brazen vessel, in which the blood of 
the slaughtered victims was caught, and the 
brush or twig wherewith the worshippers 
were sprinkled, while they stood behind a 
partition-wall opposite the platform of the 
gods, and from this outer court beheld the 
ceremonies. 

The temple of Upsal, the Teutonic Delphi, 
was in circumference not less than nine nun- 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 17 

dred ells, and glittered on all sides with gold. 
In it Odin was represented with a sword in 
his hand, while on his left stood Thor, with 
the insignia of a crown, a sceptre, and a ham- 
mer, and on his right Freyja, an hermaphro- 
dite, with many emblems characteristic of 
productiveness. Near Eresburg, on the Dri- 
mel, stood, till the times of Charlemagne, the 
celebrated Teutonic idol, called the Irmin- 
Saule. 1 On a high stone column rose the 
figure of a gigantic warrior, girt with a 
sword, holding in his right hand a banner, on 
which was painted a bright red rose, in his 
left hand a balance. The crest of the war- 
rior's helmet was a cock ; on his breast was 
figured a bear ; on the shield was the rep- 
resentation of a lion in a field full of flowers. 
The image itself was eleven feet in height, 
and of a light red colour. Its base was of 
rude stone, surrounded with belts of orichal- 
cum, of which the upper and lower were 
gilded. It was the largest idol of all Saxony, 
and pictures of it were suspended in other 
temples, and its priests enjoyed a high repu- 
tation. It was believed to be able to aid the 
warrior in the din of battle, who oftentimes 
rode round it, and murmured to it his prayers. 
Sometimes it was borne into the field and 
when the conflict was over, all the prisoners, 

1 Meibomius, ** Delrminsula;" Adam Brem. i. 6 ; 
Akenaan's "Pagan Saxundom," p. xxi. 



18 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

and all who had disgraced themselves by 
cowardice, were immolated at its feet. 1 

The offerings presented in these temples 
consisted of all living things — sheep, oxen, 
swine, and especially horses. The latter sac- 
rifice was particularly characteristic of the 
Germanic races. The victims having been 
slaughtered before the images of the gods, the 
heads were by preference offered to them, and 
with the hides were fixed or hung on trees in 
the sacred groves. The blood was caught in 
the blood-bowl, and sprinkled with the blood- 
twig on the altar, the images, and the people, 
while the fat was used for anointing the 
images themselves, which were afterwards 
rubbed dry. The flesh was boiled down in 
caldrons over fires placed along the whole 
length of the nave. Round these the wor- 
shippers took their seats, and ate the flesh and 
partook of the broth, while the chief to whom 
the temple belonged blessed the cups of mead 
or beer in honour of Odin, Freyr, Thor, Frigga, 
and, last, of departed friends. Then the rest 
in order took the cup, and each made his 
prayer or offered his vow ; and so the feast 
went on, terminating too often in riot and 
drunkenness. 

Such were the usual sacrifices. On great 
occasions, however, human victims were 
offered, especially slaves, criminals, and cap- 

* See Dasent's " Burnt Njal," I. xxxix. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE, 19 

tives This custom was common to all the 
Germanic races. But at Upsal the ninth month 
in each year — and every ninth year appear to 
have been specially set apart for these sacri- 
fices. On such occasions, the presence of the 
king, together with all citizens of importance, 
was deemed absolutely essential. Human vic- 
tims appear to have been offered either as 
sacrifices of atonement, or to appease the wrath 
of malign deities, or as propitiatory sacrifices 
to the dead in the nether world. 1 In seasons 
of more than ordinary calamity, the king him- 
self was expected to lay down his life. Thus, 
on the occasion of a great dearth, the first king 
of Vermaland, in Sweden, was burnt in honour 
of Odin. Again, in a great sea-fight with the 
Jomsburg pirates, the jarl Hakon offered up 
his son to obtain the victory ; and Aun, an- 
other king of Sweden, immolated at the shrine 
of Odin nine of his sons, in order that his own 
life might be prolonged. 

3. But it is now time to glance at the third 
group of nations, the Sclavonic. 

On a map of Europe in the beginning of the 
sixth century we find the Sclaves represented 
as forming three principal branches, or aggre- 
gates of tribes. Towards the east, resting on 
the Euxine, and extending from the Dniester 
to the Dnieper and the Don, are the Antes, the 
progenitors of the great Russian people. To- 

1 See Bartholini's "Antiq. Danicae,' 1 pp. 388-396; 
Adam Brem. "Gesta PP. Hammaburg,' 1 iv. 26. 



20 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

wards the west, resting on the Baltic, are the 
Venedi, or Wends. Between the two inter- 
vene the Slavenes, a nomad race blending 
sometimes with the eastern, sometimes with 
the western branch. 

The first coming of the Sclaves was peace- 
ful. They occupied quietly such lands as 
their Teutonic brethren left them, and thence 
pushed forward to the south and west, build- 
ing trading cities like Kieff and Novgorod and 
Arcona, sinking mines in Germany, smelting 
and casting metals, preparing salt, and plant- 
ing fruit-trees, leading a quiet and contented 
life. 

Early writers uniformly speak of them in 
favorable terms, Procopius describes them as 
free from malice and fraud, generous and hos- 
pitable. Adam of Bremen extols their kind- 
ness and courtesy towards strangers. 1 But 
they became at an early period the victims of 
unparalleled oppressions, and the consequences 
could be traced with terrible clearness in the 
change which their national character under- 
went. Under the iron heel of the Germans on 
the north, of the Turks on the south, and after- 
wards of the Mongols on the east, their ve- 
racity and good faith were exchanged for du- 
plicity and cunning. At first they displayed 
all the characteristics of the pastoral tribe. 
Living in huts of rough timber in the depths 

i l< Hist. Eccles. 11 ii. 12 ; and compare the letter of 
Boniface to Ethel bald, Ep. lxii. ed. Migne. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 21 

of forests, or along the banks of rivers, they 
tended their numerous flocks of sheep and 
cattle, defending themselves in time of war 
with nothing but a shield for a weapon of de- 
fence, and for offence a bow and a quiver of 
poisoned arrows or the lasso. But after cen- 
turies of oppression they became demoralized 
and debased. Submissive in adversity, they 
were tyrants in their hour of power, and ob- 
tained a notoriety for cruelties practised only 
amongst the most savage natons. 

Procopius sketches the chief features of 
their religious system. "The Sclavonians," 
he says, " worship one god, the ' Maker of the 
Thunder,' whom they hold to be the only lord 
of the universe, and to whom they offer cattle 
and different kinds of victims. They do not 
believe in fate, or that it has any power over 
mortals. Whenever they are in danger of 
death, either from illness or from the enemy, 
they make vows to God to offer sacrifices if 
they should be saved. When the peril is over, 
they fulfil their vows, and believe that it was 
this which saved them. They also worship 
rivers, nymphs, and some other deities, to 
whom they offer sacrifices, making divinations 
at the same time." * 

Later writers give us further particulars, 
from which it would appear that the Sclavonic 
religion was marked on the one hand by the 

* Procopius, " De Bello Gothic©." 



22 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

worship of the gladdening, fructifying powers 
of nature, and on the other by the deprecation 
of dark and sinister powers, who manifested 
their malignant arts by creating discord, sick- 
ness, and death. The first was symbolized by 
Lada, the goddess of love and pleasure ; Ku- 
pala, the god of the fruits of the earth ; Ko- 
leda, the god of festivals, who delighted in 
offerings of fruits, and rejoiced in songs and 
dances round lighted fires. Of the second, the 
chief was Zernabog, "the black deity/' whose 
name recalls the Matchi Manito of the Mexi- 
cans, and who, like the latter, was approached 
with fear and horror, and propitiated with hu- 
man sacrifices. 

The Lord of Thunder was worshipped at 
Kieff and Novgorod under the name of Peroun, 
and in Moravia his idol was of wood, with the 
head of silver. At Rugen were the images of 
Porenut, "the god of the seasons," with four 
faces and a fifth on his breast ; and of Rhuge- 
vit, "the god of war," with seven faces, and 
seven swords suspended at his side and an 
eighth in his hand. 

At Romove, in Prussia, as late even as the 
year A.D. 1230, three gods were especially 
worshipped; Percunos, "the god of thunder," 
Potrimpos, "the god of corn and fruits," 
Picullos, "the god of the infernal regions." 
The face of the first was expressive of extreme 
anger, his head being wreathed with a crown 
of flames ; the second was represented by a 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 23 

beardless youth, and wore a chaplet of green 
leaves and ears of corn ; the face of the third 
was pale, the beard snow-white, the eyes look- 
ing downwards on the ground. 

But the most famous idol, at least of the 
Baltic Sclavonians, was Sviantovit, or Swan- 
tevit. His temple was at Arcona, the capital 
of the island of Rugen, and was not destroyed 
till the year a.d. 1168. A Danish historian 1 
informs us that the temple, which was of 
wood and beautifully constructed, rose from 
a level spot in the midst of the town. It had 
two enclosures. The outer consisted of a wall 
with a roof painted red; the interior was hung 
with tapestry and ornamented with paintings. 

The idol, which stood in the sanctuary, was 
of gigantic size, with four heads and as many 
necks, two chests, and two backs, one turned 
to the right, the other to the left. In his right 
hand the god held a horn made of various 
metals, which was once a year filled with mead 
by the attendant priest. His left arm was bent 
towards his side in the form of a bow. He 
was arrayed in a long flowing robe reaching 
down to the feet, while around him lay his 
bridle, and a sword of enormous size with a 
beautiful hilt and scabbard. 

The worship of the idol was defrayed by an 
annual tax, payable by every inhabitant of the 

1 Saxon Grammaticus, "Hist. Danicae," lib. xiv.; 
compare also Herbordi k 'Vita Ottonis," ii. 31 ; Pertz, 
"Mon. Germ." xii. 794. 



24 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

island, by a third of the spoils taken in war, 
and by the numerous votive offerings sent to 
the temple by neighbouring chiefs A regi- 
ment of three hundred chosen cavalry was 
specially dedicated to his service, who went 
forth to fight in his name, and brought back 
the booty, which the priest made up into vari- 
ous ornaments for the shrine. 

The god himself was believed to accompany 
his votaries to the battle-field on a white horse, 
which specially belonged to him. It was a sin 
to pull a hair from his mane or tail, and the 
priest alone might feed or mount him This 
horse was especially consulted on going forth 
to war, for it was believed to be able to reveal 
the secrets of the future. When the tribe 
wished to declare war, three rows of spears 
were laid down before the temple, solemn 
prayers were then offered up, and the horse 
was led forth by the priest. If, in passing 
over these spears, he lifted his right foot first, 
then the war would be prosperous ; if the left, 
or both together, it was a fatal omen, and the 
expedition was given up. 

The most solemn festival was after harvest. 
On this occasion the people of Rugen assem- 
bled, offered sacrifices of cattle, and held a 
solemn feast. The priest, conspicuous for his 
long hair and beard, first carefully swept the 
sanctuary, holding his breath lest the divine 
presence should be defiled, and if he wished 
to respire, retiring into the open air. On the 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 25 

morning of the festival he brought forth to the 
assembled people the sacred mead-cup, which 
he took from the idol's hand. If the mead 
had decreased therein, he announced the fact 
to the worshippers, and bade them beware of 
scarcity ; if it had increased, it was an omen 
of abundance. The old liquor was then poured 
forth as a libation at the foot of the idol, and 
the priest, refilling it, engaged in solemn sup- 
plication for the people, that they might be 
prosperous and have victory in war. He then 
emptied the horn at a single draught, and 
once more refilling it, placed it in the right 
hand of the idol, where it remained till the 
next year. 

Round cakes of flour and honey were then 
offered, and the priest concluded the ceremony 
by blessing the people in the name of the god, 
exhorting them to frequent sacrifice, and prom- 
ising them, as their reward, victory both by 
sea and land. The rest of the day was spent 
in feasting on the remains of the offerings, 
and the people were taught that on this occa- 
sion intemperance was a virtue, sobriety a sin. ! 

Such is the account given by a contemporary 
writer of this celebrated Sclavonic idol ; and it 
gives us a very vivid idea of Sclavonic worship 
as it was observed as late even as the middle 
of the twelfth century. The belief in fairies 
and sprites, in water-nymphs and wood- 

1 "Histories Danic»," lib. xiv. 



26 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

nymphs, in sorcery and magic, was as active 
amongst the Sclavonians as amongst their 
Teutonic brethren, while the respect paid by 
them to their priests, who united civil and 
religious functions, was as submissive as that 
of the Celt to his Druid teacher. 



CHAPTER II. 

ST. PATRICK. 

With this sketch of the religious systems 
of the three great groups of nations now 
presented to the missionary zeal of the Chris- 
tian Church, we pass on to describe the lives 
and labours of some of those who devoted 
themselves to the work of communicating to 
them the word of life. 

We might have expected that it would be 
necessary to begin with those who went forth 
from the long-established churches of the 
Continent. But it is not so. It is true that 
instances are not wanting of men who left 
these churches to evangelize the heathen tribes 
around them: that Ulphilas laboured with no 
little success amongst the Goths of Maesia; that 
the great Chrysostom founded in Constanti- 
nople an institution in which Goths might be 
trained and educated to preach the Gospel to 
their fellow-countrymen; 1 that Valentinus won 
for himself the title of ' ' the apostle of 

i Theodoret, "H. E." v. 30. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. #7 

Noricum;" l that his work was carried on with 
signal success by Severinus; 2 that, after the 
conversion of Clovis and the foundation of the 
Frankish Church, Avitus of Yienne, Cassarius 
of Aries, and Faustus of Riez, proved what 
might be done by energy and self-devotion 
among the masses of heathendom. 

But the Frankish Church was not destined 
to evangelize the rude nations of Europe. The 
internal dissensions, the constant wars, among 
the successors of Clovis, were not favourable 
either to the development of Christianity in 
their own dominions or its propagation abroad. 
The rapid accession of wealth more and more 
tempted the Frankish bishops to live as mere 
laymen, and the light of their Church grew 
dim. Xot only were the heathen lying around 
neglected, but within her own territory the 
Frankish Church saw her own members re- 
lapsing in some instances into : the old idola- 
tries. 

A new influence, therefore, was required if 
this light was to be rekindled, and the nations 
of Europe evangelized. And this new in- 
fluence the providence of God supplied. But 
to trace its origin we must leave the Continent 
of Europe for an island high up in the North- 
ern Sea, which the Roman Agricola had once 
dreamt of invading and holding with a single 

1 See Surius, "Acta SS." Aug. 4. 
8 See ''The Hermits," by Professor Kingsley, pp. 
224-346. 



28 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

legion, 1 but where the imperial proconsuls and 
praetors had never landed, and which was now 
almost forgotten amidst the breaking up of the 
Roman empire In short, we must begin with 
the great apostle of Ireland, St. Patrick. 

The original name of St. Patrick was Succat, 
which is said to signify " strong in war." 
Patricius appears to have been his Roman 
name. He was born of Christian parents at 
some period between a.d. 395 and a.d. 415. 
His father Calphurnius was a deacon, his 
grandfather Potitus a priest. Though an 
ecclesiastic, Calphurnius would seem to have 
held the rank of decurion, 2 and may therefore 
have been of Roman or provincial British ex- 
traction. His birthplace was a spot which he 
himself calls Bonavem Taberniae, and which 
in all probability may be identified with the 
modern Kirkpatrick, between Dumbarton and 
Glasgow. 

The parents of Succat, as has been already 
said, were Christians, and it would seem that 
the Gospel had been preached to some extent 
in the neighbourhood of his father's home. 
Whatever amount, however, of instruction he 
may have received was rudely interrupted, 
when he was about sixteen years of age. 

The coasts of Scotland were at this time ex- 
posed to the frequent incursions of Irish chief - 

1 Taciti "Vita Agricolse," ch. xxiv. 
3 <4 S. Patricii Ep. ad Coroticum;" Todd's "Life of 
St. Patrick," p. 354. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 29 

tains, who landed in their swift barks, ravaged 
the country, and having carried off as many of 
the inhabitants as they could, consigned them 
to slavery. In one of these expeditions the 
house of Calphurnius was attacked, and Succat, 
with two of his sisters and many of his coun- 
trymen, was carried away, and conveyed to 
the north of Ireland. 

Here he was purchased as a slave by Michul 
or Milchu, a chief of North Dalaradia, who 
dwelt in the valley of the Braid, near Mount 
Slemish, in the county of Antrim. The work 
assigned him was that of attending his master's 
flocks and herds, and in his ''Confession/' 
which he wrote towards the close of his life, 
he describes how he wandered over the bleak 
mountains, often drenched with the rains, and 
numbed with the frosts. His period of ser- 
vitude lasted six years ; and during this time 
he would seem to have made himself acquaint- 
ed with the language of the native tribes, and 
to have learnt their habits and modes of life. 
At length he succeeded in effecting his escape 
to the sea-side, where he took ship and after 
a tempestuous passage, regained his father's 
house. His stay, however, was destined to be 
very short. In a predatory excursion he was 
a second time taken captive, and again, after a 
brief interval, succeeded in making his escape. 1 

1 This second captivity, however, appears some- 
what doubtful. See Todd's "Life of St. Patrick." pp. 
375. 376, 



30 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

Had he listened to his parents, he would now 
have remained with them, but he was bent on 
a very different occupation. "The Divine 
Voice," he says, " frequently admonished me 
to consider whence I derived the wisdom 
which was in me, who once knew neither the 
number of my days nor was acquainted with 
God; and whence I obtained afterwards so 
great and salutary a gift as to know and to love 
God." During the weary hours, moreover, of 
his captivity, he had often reflected how bless- 
ed a thing it would be if he, to whom it had 
been given to know the true God and his Son 
Jesus Christ, could carry the glad tidings to 
his master's people and the land of his exile. 

One night, he tells us, he had a dream, in 
which he thought he saw a man coming from 
Ireland with a number of letters. One of these 
he gave him to read, and in the beginning 
occurred the words, " The voice of the Irish." 
While he was reading it, he thought he heard 
a voice calling to him across the Western Sea, 
"We entreat thee, holy youth, to come and 
walk among us." 

Obedient, therefore, to what he deemed to 
be a plain leading from heaven, and resisting 
the arguments and entreaties of relatives and 
friends, who mocked at his enthusiastic re- 
solve, he set out for the monasteries of south- 
ern France, there to prepare himself for the 
work of preaching the Gospel in the land of 
his captivity. Amidst the conflicting legends 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 31 

which now follow him at every step, it seems 
probable that he repaired to the monastic 
schools of Tours, Auxerre, and Lerins, where 
he studied, and was employed for some little 
time in pastoral duties, having been ordained 
successively deacon and priest. 

There, too, he would seem to have been 
elevated to the episcopate, and thence with a 
band of fellow- labourers he set sail for Ireland, 
about the middle of the fifth century. Land- 
ing on one of the islands off the coast of 
Dublin, he and his companions tried unsuccess- 
fully to obtain provisions, which they greatly 
needed. Thence sailing northwards, they put 
in at a strait called Brene, and after landing 
at the south-western extremity of Strangford 
Lough, 1 advanced some considerable way into 
the interior. 

They had not gone far before they encoun- 
tered a native chief named Dichu, at the head 
of a band of men. Mistaking St. Patrick for 
the leader of one of the many pirate crews, 
which at that time often appeared upon the 
coast, he was on the point of putting him 
to death. But struck by the missionary's 
appearance, and seeing that both he and his 
companions were unarmed, he hospitably re- 
ceived them into his house. In frequent inter- 
views he now heard the doctrines of the faith, 
and after a time was baptized, with all his 

* Todd's " Life of St. Patrick," pp. 406, 407. 



32 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

family. According to some authorities, he 
also bestowed upon his Instructor the ground 
whereon his barn was built; and here arose 
the celebrated church called Sabhall Patraic, 
"The Barn of Patrick," which still retains 
the name of Sabhal, or Saul, and is situated 
about two miles north-east of Downpatrick 

Leaving Saul, the missionaries proceeded to 
northern Dalaradia, and the residence of St. 
Patrick's old master, Milchu. But nothing 
would induce the old chief to receive one who 
had been once his slave, or to forsake the 
paganism of his forefathers. His journey thus 
ineffectual, St. Patrick returned to the district 
where Dichu resided, and made the neighbour- 
hood for some time his head-quarters. 

Thence proceeding southward, he deter- 
mined to visit the central parts of the island, 
and especially the famous hill of Tara, where 
King Laoghaire was about to hold a great 
religious festival in the presence of all his 
tributary chieftains, Druids, and bards. In 
this stronghold of Druidism he resolved to 
celebrate the approaching festival of Easter, 
and preach the word to the assembled chiefs. 
It was Easter Eve, we are told, when he 
reached the neighbourhood of Tara, and hav- 
ing erected a tent, he made preparations for 
spending the night with his companions, and 
kindled a fire for the purpose of preparing 
food. As the smoke curled upwards in the 
eve&ing air, it was observed by the Druids in 



OF MEDIJEVAL EUROPE. 33 

the king's tents, and caused the greatest con- 
sternation To kindle any fire during the 
solemn assembly of the chiefs, before the king 
had lighted the sacred flame in the palace of 
Tara, was a sin of the greatest enormity, and 
the Druids did not scruple to warn the king 
that if the fire of the stranger was not extin- 
guished that night, unto him, whose fire it 
was, would belong the sovereignty of Ireland 
for ever 

Messengers were accordingly sent to dis- 
cover the authors of the sacrilege, and to order 
them to appear before Laoghaire. The mis- 
sionaries went, and their fearlessness when in 
the presence of the monarch and his nobles 
won for them a respectful hearing. On the 
following day St. Patrick again addressed the 
chiefs, doubtless in their own language, and 
proclaimed to them the doctrines of the faith. 
Laoghaire himself, indeed, did not profess to 
be a convert, but he gave permission to the 
man of God to preach the word on condition 
that he did not disturb the peace of the king- 
dom. During the ensuing week, therefore, 
when the great public games were celebrated 
at Tailten, the missionary and his companions 
addressed themselves to the youngest brother 
of the king, and were so favourably received 
that he professed himself a believer, submitted 
to baptism, and is said to have given the site 
of a church, called afterwards "The Gre^t 
Church of Patrick," 



34 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

The impression thus made upon the chiefs 
was soon shared by their subjects, and though 
the pagan party made frequent attempts to 
put the missionaries to death, from which they 
narrowly escaped, they were heartily received 
in Westmeath, Connaught, Mayo, and Ulster, 
and before long found themselves strong 
enough to destroy the great idol Crom-cruach, 
on the plain of Magh Slecht, 1 in the county of 
Cavan, and, in the district of the clan Amal- 
gaidh, admitted to baptism the seven sons of 
the king and many of their people. 

To the worshippers of the powers of nature, 
and especially the sun and other heavenly 
bodies, St. Patrick proclaimed that the great 
luminary which ruled the day had no self- 
originated existence, but was created by One, 
whom he taught them to call God the Father. 
" Beside him," said he, ''there is no other 
god, nor ever was, nor will be. He was in 
the beginning before all things, and from him 
all things are derived, visible and invisible. ,, 
He told them next of ' ' his only -begotten Son 
Jesus Christ, who had become man, had 
conquered death and ascended into heaven, 
where he sat far above all principalities and 
powers, and whence he would hereafter 
come to judge both the quick and the dead, 
and reward every man according to his deeds." 

1 See O'Curry's Lectures p. 103; O'Donovan's 
"Tribes and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach,' 1 p, 310 n, 
and the Addenda, 



OF MEDIJEVAL EUROPE. 35 

"Those," he declared, " who believed in him, 
would rise again in the glory of the true Sun, 
that is, in the glory of Jesus Christ, being 
by redemption sons of God and joint-heirs 
of the Christ, of whom, and by whom, and 
to whom, are all things ; for the true Sun, 
Jesus Christ, will never wane nor set, nor will 
any perish who do his will, but they shall 
live for ever, even as he liveth for ever with 
God the Father Almighty, and the Holy Spirit, 
world without end. " 1 

Such, as it would seem from his " Confes- 
sion," was the Gospel he proclaimed, and his 
words, confirmed and illustrated by his own 
intrepid zeal, ardent love, and sincere and de- 
voted life, made a deep impression on the 
minds of the Celtic chiefs. With the religious 
enthusiasm deeply seated in the primitive 
Celtic character, which many years before 
won for St. Paul so warm a reception in Gala- 
tia, 2 their hearts were touched, and they wel- 
comed the missionary and believed the word 
which he preached. 

As time went on, the labours of St. Patrick 
were lightened by the arrival of the bishops 
Secundinus, Auxilius, and Isserninus, whom 
he had sent either to France or Britain to 
receive consecration. Their coming enabled 
him to extend the sphere of his operations, 

1 See " S. Patricii Confessio," O'Connor, "Script, 
Hibern." vol. i. pp. cvi, cxvii, 

2 Gal. iv. 13-15- 



36 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

and he undertook missionary tours in Meath, 
Leinster, Ossory, and Munster. These con- 
tinued for several years, during which he was 
occupied in preaching the word, baptizing 
new converts, and erecting churches. Know- 
ing well how much his own acquaintance with 
the native language had contributed to his 
success, he laboured diligently to establish a 
native ministry wherever he went. Cautiously 
selecting from the higher classes those whose 
piety and intelligence seemed to fit them for 
the work of the ministry, he established semi- 
naries and monastic schools, where they were 
trained and educated ; and to these schools the 
young of both sexes flocked with extraordinary 
eagerness. 

While he was labouring in the southeastern 
part of Munster, a petty prince of Cardigan- 
shire, named Coroticus, though apparently 
professing Christianity, set out from Wales, 
and descending on the Irish coast with a band 
of armed followers, murdered several of the 
people, and carried off a large number with the 
intention of disposing of them as slaves. This 
outrage, perpetrated in one of the districts 
where St. Patrick was baptizing, roused his 
keenest indignation, and he wrote a letter, 
which he sent by one of his companions, call- 
ing upon Coroticus to restore the captives, 
many of whom had been baptized. But his 
request being treated with contempt and scorn, 
be composed another circular epistle, in which 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 37 

he inveighed in the strongest terms against 
the cruelty of the marauding tribe and its 
chief. He contrasted his conduct with that of 
the Christians of the Continent, who were in 
the habit of sending large sums of money to 
ransom captives, and concluded by threaten- 
ing him and his followers with excommunica- 
tion, unless he desisted in future from his 
piratical habits. What was the result of the 
epistle is not known, but it is to be feared 
that the attempt to recover the captives was 
not successful. Slavery and the trade in 
slaves was almost more difficult to root out 
than paganism, and the inhuman traffic was 
in full activity as late as the tenth century be- 
tween England and Ireland, and the port of 
Bristol was one of its principal centres. 

Meanwhile, after a somewhat lengthened 
sojourn in the district of Lowth and parts of 
Ulster, St. Patrick reached the district of 
Macha, containing the royal city of Emania, 
the residence of the kings of Ulster, the re- 
mains of which, under the name of the Navan, 
still exist about two miles west of Armagh. 
Here he was cordially received by Daire, a 
wealthy chief, who made over to him a pleas- 
ant piece of ground on an eminence, Druim- 
saileh or "Hill of the Willows." The spot 
pleased St. Patrick, and here he determined to 
erect a church. The foundations were ac- 
cordingly laid, and around it rose by degrees 
the city of Armagh, the ecclesiastical metrop- 



38 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

olis of Ireland ; and here its founder spent 
the remainder of his life, only leaving it now 
and then to visit his favourite retreat at Saul, 
round which clustered so many associations of 
his earliest labours, and of his first convert 
Dichu. 

Here, too, having called to his aid the 
bishops Secundinus, Isserninus, and Auxilius, 
who next to himself were best qualified by 
long experience for the work, he proceeded to 
hold synods and to make regulations for the 
general government of the churches he had 
founded. Again and again he was solicited to 
revisit his friends and relatives in Scotland, 
but nothing could induce him to leave his 
post. In his "Confession," written when far 
advanced in years, he touchingly describes 
how often he had been requested to come 
amongst his kinsmen once more, but how a 
deep sense of the spiritual love between him- 
self and his flock ever retained him in Ire 
land. 

It was while he was staying at Saul that 
the apostle of Ireland was seized with his last 
illness. He had lived to a good old age, and 
the sunset of his life was calm and peace- 
ful. Perceiving that his end drew nigh, 
and desirous, as we are told, that Armagh 
should be the resting-place of his remains, 
he set out thither, but was unable to 
continue the journey. Increasing weakness, 
and, as it seemed to him, the voice of an angel, 



OP MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 39 

bade him return to the church of his first con- 
vert ; and there he closed his eyes in death, 
probably in the year a.d. 493, l leaving behind 
hira the visible memorials of a noble work 
nobly done. He and his fellow-labourers had 
made for themselves by the labours of their 
own hands civilized dwellings amidst the 
tangled forest and dreary morass. At a time 
when clan-feuds and bloodshed were rife, and 
princes rose and fell, and all was stormy and 
changeful, they had covered the island with 
monastic schools, where the Scriptures were 
studied, ancient books collected and read, and 
native missionaries trained for their own 
country, and for the remotest parts of the 
European continent. 



CHAPTER III. 
COLUMBANUS AND GALLUS. 

And now that we have watched the rise of 
the Celtic churches in Ireland, we shall see 
how they poured back with interest the gifts 
of civilization and Christianity on the Conti- 
nent of Europe. Blending the ardour of Chris- 
tian enthusiasm with an inextinguishable love 
of travelling and adventure, they now began 
to search out the most rugged fields of labour 
amongst the most barbarous tribes of Switzer- 
land and Germany. 

i See Todd's " Life of St. Patrick,' 1 p. 497. 



40 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

The outward appearance of these Celtic 
missionaries must have been very striking. 
Travelling generally in companies — the Irish 
tonsure high on their shaven heads, their long 
locks flowing behind, their outfit a pastoral 
staff, a leathern water-bottle, a wallet, a 
leathern case for their service-books, another 
containing relics — they flocked across the sea, 
landed on the western shores of France, and, 
after paying their devotions at some shrine, 
generally that of St. Martin at Tours, pressed 
on to some forest, and there — all obedient to 
one man, all, as they styled themselves, "sol- 
diers of Christ" — they settled down, and by 
dint of great labour cleared some portion of 
the waste. Before long the wooden huts arose, 
with the little chapel and round tower or 
steeple by its side, with the abbot's chamber, 
the refectory, the kitchen, the barn for the 
grain, and other buildings ; and here they 
lived, and prayed, and studied, tilling the 
waste, preaching the word, healing the sick, 
comforting the afflicted, and teaching the 
heathen tribes a " more excellent way " than 
the cruel worship of Odin and Thor. 

One of the earliest and most eminent of 
these Celtic missionaries must now engage our 
attention. 

Two years before St. Columba sailed for his 
island home in Iona, Columbanus was born in 
Leinster, of noble parents, and was placed at 
a very early age under the venerable Senile, 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 41 

abbot of Cluain-inis, in Lough Erne. Under 
this able teacher his studies embraced — besides 
the Holy Scriptures — grammar, rhetoric, and 
geometry ; and his rapid progress was attested 
by a commentary on the Psalms, which he 
composed at an early age, besides other re- 
ligious works. Resolved on embracing the 
monastic state, he left Cluain-inis for the great 
monastery of Banchor, on the coast of Ulster, 
and submitted himself to the discipline of the 
eminent abbot, St. Comgall. But he could not 
make up his mind to stay at Banchor. Seized 
with the yearning after foreign travel which 
seemed to have taken so many of his country- 
men by storm, and eagerly desirous to preach 
the Gospel to the pagan tribes on the Conti- 
nent of Europe, he acquainted the abbot with 
his resolve to leave his own country and his 
father's house, and labour abroad. In vain St. 
Comgall remonstrated. Columbanus remained 
firm, and, at the age of thirty, having selected 
twelve companions from amongst the brethren, 1 
he bade farewell to Ireland, and, after barely 
touching on the shores of Britain, landed in 
France in the year a.d. 580. 

He found the kingdom of the Franks 
Christian indeed, but only in name, distracted 
with furious wars, and neglected by its own 
bishops. After traversing the country for 
some time and preaching the word, he arrived 

1 See "Vita S. Galli;" Pertz, "Mon. Germ." vol. ii. 
p. 47. 



42 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

in Burgundy, where lie was eagerly welcomed 
by Guntram, the least blameworthy of the 
grandsons of Clovis. Here he might have 
found a secure retreat and a sphere of useful 
labour ; but his ascetic spirit longed for a 
sterner mission field. On the confines of the 
kingdoms of Austrasia and Burgundy rose the 
wild and desolate range of the Vosges, and 
tribes of pagan Suevians roamed over districts 
once colonized by the Roman legionaries. Here 
he determined to take up his abode ; and with 
his twelve companions first settled down 
amidst the ruins of the ancient Roman castle 
of Anegray. Here and at Luxeuil, where the 
speedily increasing number of his disciples 
forced him to lay the foundations of another 
monastery, were charms for the severest 
ascetic. 

' ' Over a range of sixty leagues, and a breadth 
of ten or fifteen, nothing was to be seen but 
parallel chains of inaccessible defiles, divided 
by endless forests, whose bristling pine- woods 
descended from the peaks of the highest 
mountains to overshadow the course of the 
rapid and pure streams of the Doubs, the 
Dessoubre, and Loue." 1 War and devastation 
had well-nigh effaced every trace of Roman 
colonists. What their industry had cultivated 
the sword of the barbarous invaders, and 
especially of Attila, had restored to solitude, 

1 Montalembert's "Monks of the West," vol. ii. pp. 
403, 404. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 43 

and made once more the haunt of the bear, the 
bison, and the wolf. 

No spot could have been found more suited 
to the spirit of Columbanus. Nowhere could 
he and his companions better learn to practise 
self-denial and inure themselves to the sever- 
est hardships. Before long, at Anegray and 
Luxeuil, monasteries arose amidst the waste, 
on the model of those Columba had raised 
under the oaks of Deny. The boundaries of 
the monastic colony were duly marked out, 
and the forest cleared. Within these rose the 
humble cells of thatch and wattles, and con- 
spicuously the church with the round tower, 
which could serve as a place of refuge in times 
of need. In fields reclaimed from desolation 
the seed was sown, and when the summer had 
mellowed the waving grain, the brethren 
reaped the golden harvest. The mysterious 
life of the strangers profoundly moved the 
hearts of Franks and heathen alike. Hundreds 
flocked to listen to their religious instructions ; 
hnndreds more, encouraged by their labours 
in clearing and tilling the land, took to copy- 
ing their example. At Anegray, at Luxeuil, 
at Fontenay, they beheld forests cleared, trees 
felled, and the lands ploughed by the same 
assiduous hands, all obedient to one head, who 
sometimes assisted in, and always encouraged, 
their labours. 

A Rule severer than that of Benedict bound 
every member of the increasing fraternity. 



44 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

Incessant toil, either in the field or in copying 
and illuminating manuscripts ; the punctilious 
observance of repeated devotional exercises, 
three by day and three by night ; the severest 
discipline, extending to every motion of the 
body, and regulating even the tone of the 
voice ; — these and other methods were em- 
ployed by the enthusiastic abbot in moulding 
to implicit obedience those who were admitted 
to his cloisters. 

"Obedience" is the heading of the first 
chapter of his Rule, and the question, " What 
are the limits of obedience ? " is answered, 
"Even unto death; for unto death Christ 
submitted himself to the Father for us." The 
life of the monastic brother is thus described : 
— " Let the monk live under the discipline of 
one father, and in the society of many — that 
from the one he may learn humility, from the 
other patience — from the one silence, from the 
other gentleness ; let him never gratify his 
own wishes ; let him eat whatever he is bid- 
den ; let him possess only what he receives ; 
let him perform his allotted task with diligence; 
only when wearied out let him retire to bed ; 
let him be compelled to rise before he has 
slept sufficiently ; when he is injured, let him 
hold his peace ; let him fear the head of the 
monastery as a master, and love him as a 
father ; let him believe that whatever he or- 
ders is for his good, and obey him without 
question, seeing that he is called to obedience, 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 45 

and to fulfil all that is right ; let his fare be 
homely and sparing, sufficient to support life 
without weighing down the spirit — a little 
bread, vegetables, pulse, or flour mixed with 
water ; let this be his diet, as becometh one 
who professeth to seek in heaven an eternal 
crown." 

But the abbot was far from teaching his dis- 
ciples that the essence of piety consisted in ex- 
ternals. Again and again he reminds them that 
true religion consists not in the outward humil- 
ity of the body but of the heart. He himself 
ever set them a worthy example. At once prac- 
tical and contemplative, he would work as hard 
as the best of them in clearing the waste, and 
then he would penetrate into the deepest re- 
cesses of the forest, there to read and meditate 
on the Scriptures, which he always carried 
with him. On Sundays and high festivals he 
abstracted himself even yet more from out- 
ward things. Seeking a cave, or some other 
secluded spot, he would devote himself en- 
tirely to prayer and meditation, and so pre- 
pare for celebrating the holy services of the 
day without distraction. " Whosoever over- 
comes himself," he was wont to say, "treads 
the world under foot. No one who spares 
himself can really hate the world. If Christ 
be truly in us, we cannot live to ourselves ; if 
we have conquered ourselves, we have con- 
quered all things. If the Creator of all things 
died for us, that he might redeem us from sin t 



46 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

ought not we to die to sin i Let us die unto 
ourselves. Let us live in Christ, that Christ 
may live in us." 

These quotations, and others to the same 
effect might be easily multiplied, express the 
innermost feelings of his heart, and the prin- 
ciples which he sought to instil into the Order 
he had founded, in superintending which he 
found constant occupation for upwards of 
twelve years. 

But he was not without his sorrows and 
anxieties. Death carried off seventeen of the 
brethren, and the abbot buried them in a por- 
tion of the forest he had so lately cleared. 
Moreover, the severity of his life and his zeal 
for monastic discipline excited the bitter preju- 
dices of the Frankish clergy, whose own leth- 
argy and worldliness stood rebuked by his 
self-denial. The pertinacity also with which 
he clung to the customs he had learnt in Ire- 
land, and especially the time for the observ- 
ance of Easter, did not mend matters, and 
involved him in a correspondence with Pope 
Gregory the Great, in which, while express- 
ing all due respect for his exalted position, he 
nevertheless stoutly asserted his independence, 
and declined to alter the traditions he had 
received. 

Before long his adherence to his Irish cus- 
toms induced several bishops of the Frankish 
Church to convene a synod and deliberate how 
they should act towards the intrepid mission- 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 47 

ary. Hearing of their intention, he addressed 
them in a letter, wherein, after expressing 
his thankfulness that they had met on his 
account, and his wish that they would meet 
rather oftener, as the canons required, he re- 
ferred them as regards the Easter question 
to his correspondence with Gregory, and as- 
sured them with pathetic dignity that he was 
not the author of these differences. 

"I came as a stranger amongst you," he 
says, "in behalf of our common Lord and 
Master, Jesus Christ. In his name, I beseech 
you, let me live in peace and quiet, as I have 
lived for twelve years in these woods beside 
the bones of my seventeen departed brethren. 
Let France receive into her bosom all who, if 
they deserve it, will meet in one heaven. For 
we have one kingdom promised us, we have 
one hope of our calling in Christ, with whom 
we shall reign together if we suffer with him 
here on earth. Choose ye which rule ye will 
respecting Easter, remembering the words of 
the Apostle, Prove all things, hold fast that 
which is good. 1 But let us not quarrel with 
one another, lest our enemies, the Jews, here- 
tics, and heathen, rejoice in our contention." 
Then he concludes, " Pray for us, my father, 
even as we, humble as we are, pray for you. 
Regard us not as strangers, for we are mem 
bers together of one Body, whether we be 

» 1 Thess. v. 21, 



48 MISSIONS A1STD APOSTLES 

Gauls, or Britons, or Iberians, or to whatever 
nation we belong. Therefore let us all re- 
joice in the knowledge of the faith, and in the 
revelation of the Son of God, and let us strive 
earnestly to attain together unto a perfect man, 
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ; 1 in communion with him let us 
learn to love one another, and pray for one 
another, that with him we may together reign 
for evermore." 

Thus with mingled firmness and pathos did 
the abbot plead with the Frankish prelates. 
But he was soon called to engage in a nobler 
strife, and to protest against the vices of the 
Burgundian court, at this time ruled by the 
notorious Brunehaut, who, expelled from the 
palace of Theodebert II., king of Austrasia, 
had taken up her abode with her younger son, 
Thierri. Thierri had given himself up to the 
unbridled indulgence of his lusts, and Brune- 
haut conniving at his licentiousness, opposed 
in every possible way the substitution of a 
lawful wife for his numerous concubines, and 
sought to gain a complete ascendency in his 
kingdom, and to rule him through his vices. 

But the fame of the abbot of Luxeuil at- 
tracted Thierri, who was not without religious 
instincts, and he often visited the monastery. 
Columbanus did not neglect the opportunity 
thus afforded him. He solemnly reproved the 

i Eph, iv, 13 ? 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 49 

king for his disorderly life, and bade him 
leave the society of hismistresses for an al- 
liance with a queen, who might bring him a 
legitimate heir. The young king promised 
amendment, but Brunehaut saw in a legitimate 
queen a deathblow to all her influence, and her 
rage against the abbot was unbounded ; but 
she dared not treat him as Didier, bishop of 
Vienne, had been treated, who had paid with 
his life for boldly rebuking the king's incon- 
tinence. Shortly afterwards, whether at her 
request or of his own accord, the abbot visited 
the palace, and the queen-mother implored his 
blessing on Thierri's four illegitimate sons. 
" These bastards born in sin/' was the uncom- 
promising reply, " shall never wield the royal 
sceptre." Brunehaut, furious, bade the chil- 
dren retire, and from that day forward com- 
menced a series of petty persecutions, cutting 
off supplies from the Irish monasteries, and 
stirring up jealousy between them and the 
neighbouring convents. 

Thereupon the abbot determined to repair 
once more to the court, and to remonstrate 
with the king himself. It was sunset when 
he appeared before the palace, and on his ar- 
rival being announced, the king ordered a 
sumptuous supper to be prepared and sent out 
to him. " It is written," said the abbot, "that 
the Most High abhors the offerings of the 
wicked, who wickedly persecute the servants 
of God, and exclude them not only from theif 



50 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

own, but from the habitation of others." 
Thereupon, according to his biographer, the 
dishes in a marvellous fashion brake in pieces, 
and the wine and other viands were spilt upon 
the ground. Alarmed at the intelligence of 
what had occurred, Thierri again promised 
amendment, and Columbanus returned to Lux- 
euil. Shortly afterwards, however, hearing 
that the king had relapsed into his old habits, 
he indited a letter full of the severest rebukes, 
and threatening him with excommunication if 
he did not repent. 

Brunehaut felt that her turn was now come. 
She inflamed the mind of the king against his 
stern monitor ; she roused the nobles and 
courtiers, and appealing to the bishops, en- 
deavored to rouse their jealousy against the 
strange monk. At last, stung to the quick, 
Thierri repaired to Luxeuil, and demanded a 
free entrance to the monastery for himself and 
his suite. Nothing daunted, the abbot for- 
bade his advancing a step further. The king 
ventured as far as the refectory, but shrunk 
from proceeding beyond, so menacing were 
the other's words. " Thou thinkest, " said he, 
with a sneer, "that I shall confer on thee a 
martyr's crown; I am not so utterly foolish as 
to gratify thy pride. But since it pleaseth 
thee to live apart from all other men, thou 
shalt go hence by the way that thou earnest." J 

* Jonas " Vita S. Columbani," capp. xix. xx, 



OF MEDIJEVAL EUBOPE. 51 

Columbanus refused to leave the monastery 
except by compulsion, whereupon he was 
forcibly taken and conducted to Besan^on. 
But he managed to elude his guards, and made 
his way back to Luxeuil. Again he was taken, 
and with two or three of his companions was 
hurried to Auxerre, thence to Nevers, where 
he was placed on board a vessel and conveyed 
down the Loire to Orleans, and so to Nantes, 
where he was put on board a ship bound for 
Ireland. But a storm arose, and the vessel 
was driven back and left high and dry on the 
coast of Neustria, nor till the abbot and his 
companions had been put safely on shore did 
the waters return and float the ship out to sea. 

Thus once more in France, Columbanus re- 
paired to the court of Clotaire II., king of 
Neustria, who besought him to remain and 
hallow his realm with his presence. The ab- 
bot could be persuaded to stay only a few days 
at the court, and then, after advising the 
monarch about some political matters, re- 
quested a safe-conduct to the court of the 
Austrasian Theodebert. His request was 
granted, and he reached his destination in 
safety. The king of Austrasia received him 
with delight, but could not prevail upon him 
to remain more than a brief space in his do- 
minions. 

As he was now not far from Luxeuil, not a 
few of the brethren flocked around him once 
more, and rejoiced to see their revered abbot, 



52 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

But pining for the solitude which had beenso 
long denied him, he resolved to proclaim the 
faith among the pagan tribes bordering on the 
Austrasian confines, and embarking on the 
Rhine with a few followers, ascended the river 
as far as the lake of Zurich, and halted finally 
at Tuggen. Here the tribes of heathen Sue- 
vians roamed up and down the country, and 
are described as cruel and impious, offering 
sacrifice to idols, and addicted to augury and 
divination. One of the abbot's companions, 
an Irish monk named Callech, or Gallus, 1 set 
fire to their wooden temples, and flung their 
idols into the lake; while on another occasion 
Columbanus himself broke one of the vats 
whence the beer was to be drawn for a sacred 
festival in honour of Woden. These proceed- 
ings roused the wrath of the Suevians, and 
they drove the missionaries from their country. 
Shaking off the dust from their feet, and in- 
voking terrible maledictions on the natives, 
Columbanus and his companions left for Zug, 
and thence shaped their course to Arbon, a 
small town situated about midway along the 
south bank of the lake of Constance. 

Here they found traces of Christianity 
planted under the Roman or Frankish govern- 

J The practice of Latinizing the Irish names of these 
early missionaries was very common. Thus, Fergal 
was called Virgilius; Siadhail, Sedulius; Cathal, Ca- 
taldus; Donnchadh, Donatus; Comgall, Faustus. See 
"Ulster Archseol. Journal, 1 ' vol. vii, p. 242, 



OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE 53 

ment, and a priest named Willimar received 
them with much cordiality. Seven days were 
spent in pleasant intercourse, and in reply to 
the inquiries of his visitors Willimar pointed 
out Bregenz, at the south-eastern extremity of 
the lake, as well adapted for a centre of mis- 
sionary activity. A boat was manned by the 
friendly priest, and Columbanus and his com- 
panions made for the spot, and found it well 
suited for their purpose. Bregenz occupied the 
site of an ancient Roman camp, and contained 
the ruins of a church originally dedicated to 
St. Aurelius. Within the ruins, however, the 
missionaries found three images of brass 
gilded, fixed to the wall, which the people 
were wont to worship as the presiding deities 
of the place, and to invoke as their protectors. 
These strange gods Columbanus resolved to 
remove, and availing himself of a festival, 
when great numbers resorted to Bregenz from 
the country round, he directed Gall us, who 
was acquainted with the native language, to 
address the people m the foolishness of their 
idolatry, and to persuade them to embrace a 
true faith. His companion complied with his 
request, and in the presence of a vast mul- 
titude proceeded to reason with them on the 
absurdities of the heathen errors, and to 
proclaim to them the one living and true God 
and his Son Jesus Christ. Then taking the 
idols, he broke them in pieces, and flung them 
into the lake, while Columbanus sprinkled the 



54 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

church with holy water, and cleansed it of the 
taint of idolatry. The people were divided: 
some seeing the inability of their gods to help 
themselves, approved the boldness of the abbot, 
and were baptized; others went away filled with 
anger and bent on revenge. 

In spite, however, of the exasperation of the 
greater proportion of the inhabitants, Colum- 
banus and his little colony remained there up- 
wards of three years, erected a monastery, and 
cleared a portion of the forest. At first their 
hardships were very great, and Gallus pro- 
vided for the wants of the community by 
making nets and fishing on the lake, which to 
this day abounds with many varieties of fish. 

One night, we are told, while he was thus 
engaged, he overheard the Spirit of the Moun- 
tain call to the [Spirit of the Waters, ' ' Arise 
and hasten to my assistance ! Behold, strangers 
have come and driven me from my temple. 
Hasten to my aid, and help me to expel them 
from the land ! " To whom replied the Spirit 
of the Waters, " Lo ! even now one of them is 
busy on my surface, but I cannot injure him. 
Oftentimes have I desired to break his nets, 
but as often have I been baffled by the invoca- 
tion of an all-prevailing Name, which never 
fails to cross his lips. Thus defended, he 
always despises my snares." Gallus shuddered 
at this unearthly dialogue, but quickly cross- 
ing himself, addressed the spirits, "I adjure 
you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 55 

ye depart from this place, and never venture 
to injure any one any more." He then hastily 
made for the shore, and recounted to the abbot 
what he had heard, who rejoiced at this mani- 
fest proof that even the spirits were subject 
unto the brethren. 

Human hostility, however, they found not 
so easy to overcome. The heathen party roused 
against them one of the native chieftains, and 
Columbanus resolved to leave the neighbour- 
hood. At first he thought of going to labour 
among the Sclavic and Wendish tribes who 
bordered on the Germanic nations, but for- 
bidden by a dream to undertake this mission, 
he took with him a single disciple named 
Attalus, and crossing the Alps, repaired to the 
court of Agilulf , king of the Lombards, who 
with his queen, Theodelinda, welcomed him 
with the utmost cordiality. Agilulf bestowed 
upon him the territory of Bobbio, situated in 
a defile of the Apennines, between Genoa and 
Milan. Here were the ruins of a church 
dedicated to St. Peter, which Columbanus re- 
stored, and with the aid of companions, who 
quickly joined him, added to it the famous 
monastery of Bobbio. 1 Here also he welcomed 

1 This monastery existed as late even as the year 
1803. Its valuable library preserved not only Cicero'a 
treatise " De Republica," but an Irish antiphonarium 
of the eighth century and an early Irish missal. The 
name of its founder still survives in St. Columbano, 
near Lodi. 



56 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

several of the brethren from Luxeuil, who, 
with the abbot Eustacius at their head, came 
on an embassy from Clot aire II., now sole king 
of the Franks, and master of Austrasia, Bur- 
gundy, and Neustria, begging him to return 
to the scene of his early labours. This, how- 
ever, Columbanus declined to do, and spent 
the remaining years of his life in his new 
monastery, and died at the ripe age of seventy- 
two, November 21, a.d. 615. 

Meanwhile his companion Callech, better 
known as Gallus or St. Gall, prevented by a 
severe attack of fever from accompanying his 
master across the Alps, remained behind at 
Bregenz. On his recovery he sought out his 
old friend Willimar at Arbon, and in his 
society, and that of two of the Luxeuil breth- 
ren, Magnoald and Theodore, found ample 
employment for his boat and nets on the waters 
of the lake. 

But soon yearning, like his master, for pro- 
founder solitudes, he determined to seek a 
retreat in the midst of the surrounding forests. 
On communieating his design to Hildebald, a 
deacon under Willimar, who was intimately 
acquainted with the woods, the latter tried to 
dissuade him, by describing the perils of the 
forest and the multitude of wild beasts. ' ' If 
God be with us," replied Gallus, " who can be 
against us ? all things work together for good 
to them that love God. " 

Thus overruled, the deacon persuaded him 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 57 

at least to take some bread and a fishing- net, 
and after prayer the two set out on their 
journey. They had travelled till nearly three 
in the afternoon, when the deacon proposed 
that they should stop and refresh themselves 
before proceeding further. Gallus, however, 
true to the rule of his master, bade the deacon 
do as he pleased, but declared that, for himself, 
he was resolved to taste nothing till God should 
point out the site of their retreat. 

Evening was closing on a long summer's 
day as they reached a stream falling down 
from a rock, where they succeeded in taking 
a few fish, which the deacon proceeded to broil 
over a fire, while the other in the meantime 
retired to seek a quiet spot where he might 
engage in prayer. He had not gone far when 
his foot caught in some bushes, and he fell 
down. The deacon hastened to raise him up, 
but Gallus declined his aid, saying, "Let me 
alone: this is my resting-place for life; here 
will I dwell." Then rising up, he made a 
cross of hazel boughs and planted it in the 
ground, and suspending from it his casket of 
relics, continued for some time engaged in 
prayer that God would enable him to erect a 
monastery on this spot. Their devotions 
ended, the two partook of supper; and while 
the deacon pretended to be asleep, Gallus en- 
gaged in conflict with a bear, which, his biog- 
rapher tells us, l in obedience to the words of 

1 *• Vita S. Galli," Pertz, " Mon. Germ," vol. ii. p. 9, 



58 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

so holy a man, condescended to lay aside its 
usual ferocity, and to leave them unharmed. 

In the morning the deacon repaired to the 
stream of the Steinach, and while fishing be- 
held two demons in the form of women, who 
pelted him with stones, and imprecated curses 
on the head of his master He returned to 
Gallus, to whose word the demons were found 
to be as obedient as the bear had been on the 
preceding night, and forsook the stream. 
With a present of fish they now made their 
way back to Willimar, and recounted all that 
had befallen them. 

Shortly afterwards a message from Gunzo, 
the pagan chieftain who had been instrumen- 
tal in expelling Columbanus from the country, 
summoned Gallus to cure his daughter, who 
was possessed with a demon. The spirit 
recognised the voice of him who had spoken 
words of power on the lake, the maiden re- 
covered, and on her arrival at the court of 
the King of Austrasia, to whom she was 
espoused, recounted all that had befallen her, 
and secretly took the veil, a step which had 
been suggested by the missionary, and was 
not resented by the king. The valuable pres- 
ents which were bestowed upon him in ac- 
knowledgment of the benefit he had conferred 
Gallus distributed among the poor of Arbon. 
Among them was a silver cup, which one of 
his disciples begged him to keep for the ser- 
vice of the altar. " Silver and gold have I 



OP MEDIAEVAL EUROPE 59 

none," replied the other; " vessels of brass 
sufficed ruy master for the celebration of the 
sacred feast, and they shall be sufficient for 
me. Let it be given to the poor." 

He then retired permanently to his retreat 
in the forest, where he was joined by a dea- 
con named John, and twelve other monks, 
with whose assistance he cleared the waste, 
and erected the famous monastery which now 
bears his name. The see of Constance falling 
vacant, he repaired thither with the deacons 
John and Magnoald on the invitation of the 
duke, Gunzo, and there met the bishops of 
Autun, Spires, and Verdun, and a large body 
of clergy and laity assembled to elect a suc- 
cessor. After some deliberation Gunzo ad- 
dressed them, and exhorted them to choose 
a proper bishop according to the canons, and 
one who would rule his see with diligence. 

The eyes of all were fixed upon Gallus, and 
all agreed that no other was so fitted for the 
high office. But the missionary declined the 
proffered honour, remarking that the canons, 
except in the most urgent cases, did not per- 
mit strangers to be ordained bishops of dis- 
tricts of which they were not natives. "But," 
he added, "I have a deacon of your own 
people, who is well fitted to fill the office, and 
I propose him for your acceptance." There- 
upon the deacon John, who during their de- 
liberations had retired to the church of St. 
Stephen, was brought forth with acclamations 



60 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

by the people, presented to the bishops, and 
forthwith consecrated. Mass was then cele- 
brated, and after reading the Gospel, Gallus 
was requested to preach to the assembled 
multitude. Accordingly he commenced his 
sermon, 1 which the newly elected bishop 
interpreted. 

The discourse was little more than an 
abridged history of religion, and of the chief 
events from the Creation to the preaching of 
the Apostles. The Origin of the world, the 
Fall of our first parents, the Flood, the Call of 
Abraham, the miracles of Moses, the kingly 
period of Israel's history, the calling and 
functions of the Prophets, the miracle of the 
Incarnation, the Sufferings, Death, and Resur- 
rection of man's Redeemer, the mission of the 
Apostles, — each of these points was treated in 
turn, and made the text of some moral obser- 
vations. 

Seven days were spent at Constance, and 
then Gallus returned to his cell in the forest, 
where he spent the rest of his life, superin- 
tending for twelve years the labours of his 
monastic brethren. Receiving information of 
the death of his great master, Columbanus, 
he sent one of his disciples to make inquiries 
as to the day and hour of his demise, and 

1 It is given in full in Canisius, kl Antiq. Lect." 
vol. i. p. 784, and the " Acta SS." Oct. 16; in an 
abridged form in Pertz, " Vita S. Galli,' 1 vol. ii. p. 
14. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE 61 

received in reply a letter from the brethren at 
Bobbio, and the pastoral staff of the great 
abbot, which the latter had bequeathed to 
him. Once, and only once more, did he con- 
sent to leave his retreat. At the urgent 
request of Willimar he paid a visit to him at 
Arbon, and on the occasion of a solemnity 
preached to a large congregation. Setting out 
on his return, he was attacked with fever, and 
before he could regain his favourite retreat 
was overtaken by death, on the 16th of Octo- 
ber, a.d. 627. 

The life of St. Gall, like that of his master 
Columbanus, had been eminent for self-denial 
and usefulness. He had revived the faith in 
the ancient see of Constance, he had reclaimed 
from barbarism the district bordering on the 
Black Forest. He had taught the people 
the arts of agriculture, as well as the 
duties of religion, and the humble cell of the 
apostle of Switzerland became after his death 
the resort of thousands of pilgrims, and was 
replaced by a more magnificent edifice, 
erected under the auspices of Pepin 1'Herislta, 
which during the ninth and tenth centuries 
was the asylum of learning and one of the 
most celebrated schools of Europe 



62 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

CHAPTER IV. 
ST. AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY. 

While, however, these and other missionary 
bands were carrying the light of the Gospel 
into the countries bordering on the northern 
and eastern parts of France, events had taken 
place in England destined to exercise a pro- 
found influence on the consolidation and de- 
velopment of the churches of the Continent, 
and the evangelization of the Germanic races. 

Some five years before the founder of Lux- 
euil left Ireland for France, that is, about 
A.D. 575, the famous Gregory the Great, then 
a monk in the monastery of St. Andrew on the 
Coelian mount at Rome, was one day passing 
through the market-place, when he noticed 
several gangs of slaves exposed for sale. 
Amongst them three boys, distinguished for 
their fair complexion, the beautiful expression 
of their faces, 1 and their light flaxen hair, es- 
pecially arrested his attention. Struck with 
pity, he inquired from what part of the world 
they had come, and was answered, "From 
Britain, where all the inhabitants have the 
same fair complexion." He next proceeded to 
inquire whether the people of this strange 
country were Christians or pagans, and hear- 
ing that they were pagans, he heaved a deep 
sigh, and answered that it was sad to think 

> See Bede, " H. E." il U 



OP MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 63 

"that beings so full of light and brightness 
should be in the power of the prince of dark- 
ness." 

He next asked the name of their nation. 
"Angles," was the reply; whereupon, as 
was his manner, playing on the word, he an- 
swered, " Rightly are they called 'Angles,' for 
their faces are as the faces of angels, and they 
ought to be fellow-heirs with the angels of 
heaven." Once more he asked, "And from 
what province do they come ? " He was told 
that they came from Deira. 1 " Rightly, " he 
replied, ' are they named Deirans. From the 
ire of God are they plucked and to the mercy 
of God are they called. And who is the king 
of this province?" he proceeded. "iElia," 
was the reply. The word reminded him of 
the Hebrew expression of praise, and he an- 
swered, "Allelujah ! the praise of God shall 
be chanted in that clime." 

Then the abbot went his way, but he could 
not forget the sight of those fair-haired York- 
shire boys. He immediately conceived the 
idea of proceeding as a missionary to England, 
and, having obtained the permission of the 
Pope, had actually accomplished three days' 
journey thither, when he was overtaken by 
the messengers, whom a furious mob had com- 
pelled the Pontiff to send and recall him to 

1 The country between the Tyne and the Humber, 
including Durham and Yorkshire, 



64 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

their city. Five years, however, after his own 
elevation to the Papal chair, a.d. 595, an op- 
portunity occurred of carrying out by another 
the work he had been prevented executing in 
person. 

In the year a.d. 568 Ethelbert succeeded to 
the kingdom of Kent, and soon became lord 
over all the kings south of the Humber. The 
proximity of Kent to the Continent had 
favoured the maintenance of the old connexion 
between Britain and France, and Ethelbert 
had married a Christian princess, Bertha, the 
daughter of Charibert, king of Paris. As 
one of the conditions of the marriage it had 
been agreed that the queen should be allowed 
to enjoy the free exercise of her religion, and 
she had been attended to the Kentish court by 
a French bishop named Luidhard, who was 
permitted by Ethelbert to celebrate the wor- 
ship of the Christians' God in the little church 
of St. Martin, a relic of Roman-British times, 
outside the walls of Canterbury. 

It is only probable that Bertha should have 
endeavoured, during a union of twenty years, 
to influence her husband on the side of Chris- 
tianity, and it is not surprising that many of 
the people of Kent, whose own heathen hier- 
archy had sunk into insignificance, should have 
been anxious to receive some instruction in 
the religion of their queen. Accordingly they 
made application to the Frank ish bishops for 
Christian teachers, and it was probably intelli- 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 65 

gence of this which determined Gregory to 
make another attempt to evangelize the coun- 
try. He wrote, therefore, to Candidus, 1 who 
administered the patrimony of the Roman 
Church in Gaul, directing him to buy up Eng- 
lish youths from seventeen to twenty years of 
age, that they might be trained in different 
monasteries, and become missionaries in their 
native land. At length, in the sixth year of 
his pontificate, a.d. 596, he selected from his 
own monastery on the Coelian hill a band of 
forty monks, whom he placed under their 
prior, Augustine, and enjoined them to com- 
mence a direct mission in England. 

Accordingly, in the summer of that year, 
Augustine and his companions set out, trav- 
ersed rapidly the north of Italy, and crossing 
the Gallic Alps reached the neighbourhood of 
Aix in Provence. Here the courage of the 
little band began to fail, and they sighed for 
the security of their cells on the Ccelian hill. 
The accounts they received of the savage 
character of the Saxons filled them with 
alarm, and they prevailed on Augustine to re- 
turn to Rome, and obtain for himself and his 
companions a release from their arduous en- 
terprise. 

But Augustine had to deal, in Gregory, 
with one who lived up to the stern rule of the 
Benedictine order, who had learnt to crush all 

1 See Greg. Epp. viii. 7. 



66 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

human weakness, and to recognize no call but 
that of duty. He was forthwith sent back 
with a letter to his timid brethren, wherein 
they were enjoined to suffer nothing to deter 
them from carrying out the work they had 
undertaken, and bidden to remember that the 
more arduous the labour, the greater would be 
their eternal reward. 

Thus urged by an authority they dared not 
resist, the missionaries slowly bent their steps 
from Aix to Aries, thence to Vienne, and so 
through Tours and Anjou to the sea-coast. 
There they provided themselves with inter- 
preters from among the Franks, and setting 
sail, landed at some point on the Isle of 
Thanet. 1 

Once safely on shore, they sent messengers 
to Ethelbert to announce that they had come 
from Rome, that they were the bearers of 
joyful tidings, and could promise him glory in 
heaven and an everlasting kingdom with the 
living and true God. Ethelbert received the 
messengers in a friendly spirit, but with 
characteristic caution begged that for the 
present they would remain on the other side 
of the Stour, and would abstain from entering 
Canterbury ; and stipulated further that their 
first interview should not take place under a 

i Either at (1) Ebbe's Fleet, or (2) at a spot called 
the Boarded Groin, or (3) at Stonar near Sandwich, or 
(4) at Richborough. See Stanley's "Memorials of 
Canterbury," pp. 34, 35. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 67 

roof, but in the open air, for fear of the charms 
and spells which he fancied they might exer- 
cise upon him. 

Accordingly the Saxon king repaired to the 
Isle of Thanet, and there under an ancient 
oak awaited the coming of Augustine. To 
make a deeper impression on the monarch's 
mind, Augustine, following probably advice 
he had received from Gregory, advanced in 
solemn procession preceded by a verger car- 
rying a silver cross, and followed by another 
beariog aloft on a board, painted and gilded, 
a representation of the Saviour. Then came 
the rest of the brethren, and the choir headed 
by Laurence and the deacon Peter, who chanted 
a solemn litany. 

Arrived in the king's presence, they were 
bidden to seat themselves upon the ground. 
Ethelbert could not understand Latin, and 
Augustine could not speak Anglo-Saxon; so 
the Frankish priests interpreted while the 
missionary explained the meaning of the pic- 
ture which was borne aloft, and told the king 
how the merciful One there depicted had left 
his throne in heaven, died for the sins of a 
guilty world, and opened the kingdom of 
heaven to all believers. 

Ethelbert listened attentively, and then, in 
a manner at once politic and courteous, re- 
plied that the promises of the strangers were 
fair, but the tidings they had announced new 
and full of a meaning he did not understand. 



68 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

He promised them, however, kindness and 
hospitality, together with liberty to celebrate 
their sacred services, and undertook that none 
of his subjects, who might be so disposed, 
should be prohibited from espousing their 
religion. Thus successful beyond their utmost 
expectations, Augustine and his companions 
again formed a procession, and crossing the 
ferry to Richborough, advanced into the rude 
city of Canterbury, then embosomed in 
thickets, chanting as they went along one of 
the solemn litanies they had learned from 
Gregory, and took up their abode in the 
Stable-gate, till the king should finally make 
up his mind. 

Admitted into the city, the missionaries de- 
voted themselves to prayer and holy exercises, 
and winning the regard of all the people were 
next allowed to worship with the queen in the 
church of St. Martin, and devoted themselves 
to their great work with renewed zeal. At 
last Ethelbert avowed his willingness to em- 
brace the faith, and to the great joy, we need 
not doubt, of Bertha, was baptized in all prob- 
ability at St. Martin's church, on the 2d of 
June, being the feast of Whitsunday, a.d. 597. 
The conversion of the sovereign was the 
signal for the baptism of the people also, many 
of whom, it is not improbable, had inter- 
married with their British subjects ; and on 
the next Christmas Day upwards of ten thou- 
sand were baptized in the waters of the Swale, 



OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE. 69 

at the mouth of the Medway, and thus sealed 
their acceptance of the new faith. 

Augustine's next step was to repair "to 
France, where, in accordance with the plans of 
Gregory, he received consecration to the epis- 
copal office at the hands of the Archbishop of 
Aries. On his return he took up his abode in 
the wooden palace of the king, who retired to 
Reculver. Hard by the residence of the bishop, 
shrouded in a grove of oaks, was an old British 
or Roman church. This Ethelbert had con- 
verted into a temple wherein to worship his 
Saxon gods. Augustine did not destroy it, but 
dedicated it to St. Pancras, 1 and it became the 
nucleus of his first monastery. 

Now also Laurence and Peter were entrusted 
with the task of returning to Gregory at Rome, 
and recounting to him the success of the mis- 
sion. They were to tell him how the country 
of the fair-haired slaves he had pitied in the 
Forum had received the faith, and how Augus- 
tine himself, in conformity with his instruc- 
tions, had been raised to the episcopate. 
Moreover, they were to beg for answers to 
certain questions which caused the new bishop 
some anxiety. These related to the establish- 
ment of the revenues of Canterbury, various 
points of discipline, and especially the differ- 

1 Thus recalling to mind the monastery on the 
Coelian hill, which had been built on the property be- 
longing to the family of St. Pancras, See Stanley's 
" Memorials of Canterbury," p. 88, 



70 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

ences between the Roman and the Gallican 
liturgies, with which Augustine had become 
acquainted during his passage through France, 
and which in the face of the British clergy in 
the island might cause trouble. 

After some time the messengers returned 
with the replies of the Pope. Respecting the 
liturgies, Augustine was directed to select 
either from the Roman or the Gallican uses 
whatever appeared to him pious, religious, 
and right, to collect it into a volume, and 
establish it as the liturgy of the Anglo-Saxon 
Church, ever remembering as a guiding prin- 
ciple that ' ' things were not to be loved for the 
sake of places, but places for the sake of good 
things. " With these directions were others 
respecting the way in which the missionary 
was to deal with the monuments of heathenism. 
Gregory had written to Ethelbert requesting 
him to destroy the heathen temples in his do- 
minions. But he was not satisfied as to the 
expediency of such a course, and now, after 
much consideration, he wrote to Augustine, 
directing him not to destroy the temples, but 
only the idols that might be therein. As to 
the structures themselves, if well built, they 
were to be purified with holy water and con- 
verted into Christian churches. The heathen 
festivals might, instead of being rudely abol- 
ished, be similarly consecrated by Christian 
associations and the celebration of the birth- 
days of the saints. 



OF MEDIJSVAL ETJEOPE. 71 

The bearers of these letters were accom- 
panied by fresh labourers as a reinforcement 
to the mission, and they brought with them 
ecclesiastical vestments, sacred vessels, some 
relics of apostles and martyrs, a present of 
books, including a Bible in two volumes, two 
Psalters, two copies of the Four Gospels, and 
expositions of certain Epistles. They were 
further charged with the pall of a metropolitan 
for Augustine himself, which made him in- 
dependent of the bishops of France, and with 
a letter explaining the course which the arch- 
bishop was to take in developing his work. 
London was to be his metropolitan see, and he 
was to consecrate twelve bishops under him ; 
and whenever Christianity had extended to 
York, he was to place there also a metropolitan, 
with a like number of suffragans. 

The course he was to pursue being thus 
defined, Augustine invited the old British or 
Welsh clergy to a conference at a spot on the 
Severn, in Gloucestershire, which was for a 
long time afterwards called "Augustine's Oak. " 
Prepared to make considerable concessions, he 
yet felt that three points did not admit of 
being sacrificed. He proposed, therefore, that 
the British Church should conform to the 
Roman usage in the celebration of Easter and 
the sacrament of baptism, and that they should 
aid him in evangelizing the heathen Saxons. 
After a long and fruitless discussion on the first 
day, during which the British clergy clung as 



72 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

pertinaciously to their traditions as Columbanus 
at Luxeuil, he proposed that an appeal should 
be made to the Divine judgment. A blind 
Saxon was brought in, whom the British Chris- 
tians were unable to cure. Augustine suppli- 
cated the Divine aid, and the man, we are 
told, forthwith recovered his sight. 

Convinced, but unwilling to alter their old 
customs, the vanquished party proposed 
another meeting. Seven British bishops as- 
sembled on this occasion, together with Dinoth, 
abbot of the great monastery of Bangor in 
Flintshire. Before the synod met, they pro- 
posed to ask the advice of an aged hermit 
whether they ought to change the traditions 
of their fathers. " Yes," replied the old man, 
"if the new-comer be a man of God. " " But 
how are we to know whether he be a man of 
God?" they asked. "The Lord saith," was 
the reply, " 'Take my yoke upon you, and learn 
of me, for 1 am meek and lowly.' Now if this 
Augustine is meek and lowly, be assured that 
he beareth the yoke of Christ." "Nay, but 
how are we to know this ? " they asked again. 
" If he rises to meet you, when ye approach," 
answered the hermit, "hear and follow him; 
but if he despises you, and fails to rise from 
his place, let him also be despised by you." 

The synod met, and Augustine remained 
seated, nor rose at their approach to receive 
them. It was enough. It was plain that he 
had not the spirit of Christ, and no efforts of 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 73 

the archbishop could induce the British clergy 
to yield one of his demands. ' ' If he will not 
so much as rise up to greet us," said his op- 
posers, "how much more will he contemn us 
if we submit ourselves to him ? " Thereupon 
Augustine broke up the conference, with an 
angry threat that, if the British clergy would 
not accept peace with their brethren, they 
must look for war with their foes, and if. they 
would not proclaim the way of life to the 
Saxons, they would suffer deadly vengeance at 
their hands. 

Thus unsuccessful in winning over the 
British clergy to conformity, Augustine re- 
turned to Canterbury. And now, as all Kent 
had espoused the faith, Justus was consecrated 
to the see of Rochester, and at the same time, 
through the connexion of Ethelbert with the 
King of Essex, that kingdom was opened to 
ecclesiastical supervision, and Mellitus was 
advanced to the bishopric of London. This 
was the limit of Augustine's success. It fell, 
indeed, far short of Gregory's design, but that 
design had been formed on a very imperfect 
acquaintance either with the condition of the 
island, the strong national prejudices of the 
British Christians, or the relations which sub- 
sisted between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. 
In the following year, May 26, A.D. 605, the 
first Archbishop of Canterbury died, 1 having 

* Stanley's "Memorials of Canterbury," p. 44 n. 



74 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

already consecrated Laurence as his successor, 
and was laid in a grave by the Roman road 
outside the city walls. 

After his death the work of evangelization 
still went on. It was the work, however, not 
of one, but of two parties; the Roman, aided 
by their converts and some teachers out of 
France, and the Irish, whom Augustine had 
vainly endeavoured to persuade to join him 
in the work of proclaiming the faith to the 
Saxons. 

The first party sent Paulinus toNorthumbria, 
Felix to East Anglia, Birinus to Wessex, and 
Wilfrid to Sussex ; the latter sent Fursey to 
East Anglia, Aidan from the monastery of Hy 
to Northumbrian Finan to Essex, Cedd, Atta, 
Diuma, and Cellach into Mercia. Though the 
labourers could not agree together on several 
points of ritual and discipline, the work never- 
theless prospered, and at length the missionary 
stations dotted over the island were replaced 
by a regularly established Church, and our 
forefathers, once notorious for their fierceness 
and barbarity, were so far softened by Chris- 
tian influences, that in no country was the new 
faith more manifestly the parent of progress 
and civilization, and, as will be seen in the 
next chapter, of an ardent missionary zeal, 
eager to transmit the light of truth to kindred 



1 See " The Hermits," by Professor Kingsley, pp. 
289-291, 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 75 

Teutonic tribes in their native Germanic 
forests. 



CHAPTER V. 

ST. BONIFACE. 



About the year a.d. 680 there was living at 
Crediton, or Kirton, about eight miles north- 
west of Exeter, a noble family, amongst whose 
children was a boy named Winfrid. At an 
early period the boy betrayed much promise, 
and was designed by his parents for a secular 
career. But the visit of some monastic brothers 
to his father's house quickened a desire in his 
heart to embrace the monastic life. His father 
strongly opposed such a step, till at length 
alarmed by a dangerous illness he relented, 
and at seven years of age Winfrid was re- 
moved to a conventual school at Exeter under 
Abbot Wolfard, and thence to Nutescelle in 
Hampshire, in the diocese of "Winchester. l 

Here, under Abbot Winberct, he took the 
name of Boniface, and became eminent for his 
diligence and devotion, for his deep acquaint- 
ance with the Scriptures and his skill in 
preaching. At the age of thirty he received 
ordination, and his well-known talents pro- 
cured for him on several occasions high eccle- 

J "Vita S. Bonifacii," Pertz, " Mon. Germ."" vol. ii. 
p. 336. 



76 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

siastical employments. King Ina honoured 
him with his confidence, and the united recom- 
mendations of his brethren led to his being 
sent, on more than one occasion, on a con- 
fidential mission to v Archbishop Brihtwald. 
He might therefore have risen to an honour- 
able position in his native land, but other 
aspirations had now taken possession of his 
soul. 

No stories were listened to at this time in the 
Anglo-Saxon monasteries with greater avidity 
than those connected with the adventurous 
mission of Archbishop Willibrord among the 
heathen tribes of Frisia, and Boniface longed 
to join the noble band beyond the sea. On 
communicating his design to his abbot, the 
latter would have dissuaded him from the ar- 
duous enterprise, but he remained firm, and 
with three of the brethren, whom he had per- 
suaded to accompany him, left Nutescelle for 
London. There he took ship, and crossing the 
sea, landed at Doerstadt, then a flourishing 
emporium, now almost obliterated from his- 
torical memory. But the time of his coming, 
A.D. 716, was unpropitious. Radbod was en- 
gaged in a furious conflict with Charles Mar- 
tel, a fierce persecution of the Christians had 
broken out, and Boniface was fain to return to 
his cloister at Nutescelle. 

During the ensuing winter Abbot Winberct 
died, and Boniface, had he listened to the 
earnest solicitations of his brethren, might 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 77 

have been cordially welcomed as his succes- 
sor. But the old missionary ardour still burned 
brightly, and with the return of spring he had 
made up his mind to make another effort in 
Frisia. Daniel, bishop of Winchester, strongly 
favoured his designs, and gave him commen- 
datory letters to the Pope, whose consent and 
patronage he was anxious to secure before 
entering a second time on his difficult enter- 
prise. Accordingly, the year a.d. 717 saw him 
again in London, where he embarked and 
sailed to Etaples, on the coast of Normandy. 
In the autumn he set out through France with 
a large body of pilgrims, and, crossing the 
Alps, reached Rome in safety, and delivered 
the letters of his diocesan to Gregory II. That 
Pontiff gave the ardent monk a hearty wel- 
come, and during the winter discussed with 
him in frequent interviews the prospects of 
the mission, and finally presented him with a 
letter authorizing him to preach the Gospel 
in Germany whenever he might find an op- 
portunity. 

In *the following spring, therefore, armed 
with this commission, he set out, and, crossing 
the Alps, first commenced labouring in Thu- 
ringia. While thus employed he received in- 
telligence of the death of Radbod, and imme- 
diately repaired to the country of that chief- 
tain. The recent successes of Charles Martel 
had opened a way for Christianity in the Fri- 
sian kingdom, and for three years Boniface 



78 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

united himself with the missionary band under 
Willibrord at Utrecht, and in the destruction 
of many heathen temples and the rise of Chris- 
tian churches saw his labours crowned with 
no little success. Feeling the advance of age, 
Willibrord was now anxious that his friend 
from Nutescelle should succeed him in the see 
of Utrecht, but Boniface firmly declined the 
honour, and left him to plunge into the wilds 
of Hesse. Two native chiefs were attracted by 
his preaching, and submitted to baptism. At 
Amoneburg, near the Ohm, a monastery speed- 
ily arose, and the energetic missionary found 
that the protection of the converted chief, and 
his own acquaintance with the native language, 
gained for him such an access to the hearts of 
the people, that multitudes, both in Hesse and 
on the borders of Saxony, accepted baptism 
at his hands. 

A faithful brother, Binna, was now deputed 
to announce to Gregory these gratifying re- 
sults ; and the Pope, who could not fail to 
foresee the issue of labours so auspiciously 
begun, summoned him once more to Rome. 
Thither Boniface obediently went, escorted by 
a numerous retinue of Franks and Burgun- 
dians, and in reply to the Pope's questions re- 
specting the faith which he preached, handed 
him a copy of his creed. Gregory duly ex- 
amined it, and, after an interval of five days, 
again admitted him to an audience, and an- 
nounced that, in consideration of the success 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 79 

he had already achieved, he was ready to con- 
fer upon him the episcopal dignity. Accord- 
ingly, on the Feast of St. Andrew, a.d. 723, 
he was consecrated regionary bishop, without 
any particular diocese, but with a general 
jurisdiction over all whom he might win over 
from paganism to the Christian fold. Thus 
elevated to the episcopal dignity, with letters 
of commendation to Charles Martel, to the 
bishops of Bavaria and Alemannia, and the 
native chiefs of the countries where he was 
about to labour, Boniface recrossed the Alps, 
and, with the permission and protection of 
Charles Martel, recommenced operations in 
Hesse. 

He found that matters had not improved 
during his absence. Some of his converts 
had remained firm in the faith, but the major- 
ity, still fascinated by the spell of their old 
superstitions, had blended their new and old 
creed in a wild confusion. They still wor- 
shipped groves and fountains, still consulted 
augurs and cast lots, still offered sacrifice on 
the old altars. Boniface saw that he must 
take strenuous measures to convince them of 
the vanity of their old belief. A letter he re- 
ceived about this time from the Bishop of 
"Winchester, now blind and far advanced in 
years, suggested caution in dealing with the 
primitive superstitions of the people. A Teu- 
ton himself, and writing to a Teutonic mission- 
ary, he would have him scrupulously avoid 



80 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

all contemptuous and violent language, and 
advised that he should try, above all things, 
to cultivate a spirit of patience and modera- 
tion. In preference to open controversy, he 
suggested that he should rather put such 
questions from time to time as would tend to 
rouse the people to a sense of the contradic- 
tions which their superstitions involved, es- 
pecially in relation to the genealogy of their 
gods. 

"They will admit/' he writes, "that the 
gods they worship had a beginning, that there 
was a time when they were not. Ask them, 
then, whether they consider the world also to 
have had a beginning, or whether it has always 
existed from the first commencement of things. 
Again, inquire who governed and sustained 
the world before the birth of those gods whom 
they adore ? By what means were they able 
to gain a supremacy of power over a universe 
which had existed from all time? Whence, 
how, and when was the first god or goddess 
born? Are more deities still in process of 
generation? If not, why and when did the 
law of celestial increase come to an end ? 
Ask them, again, whether, amidst such a mul- 
titude of powerful deities as they acknowledge, 
there is not danger of failing to discover the 
most powerful, and thus offending him ? Why, 
in fact, are these gods worshipped? For the 
sake of present and temporal, or for the sake of 
future and eternal happiness ? What, again, 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUKOPE. 81 

is the import of their sacrifices? If the gods 
are all-powerful, what do they gain by them ? 
If they do not need them, why attempt to ap- 
pease them with such costly offerings ? Such 
questions I would have thee put to them, not 
in the way of taunt or mockery, which will 
only irritate, but kindly and gently. Then, 
after a while, compare their superstitions with 
the Christian doctrines, and touch upon the 
latter judiciously, that thy people may not be 
exasperated against thee, but ashamed of their 
foolish errors." 1 

Useful and wise as was such advice in refer- 
ence to his general conduct, Boniface deemed 
that the present juncture required sterner and 
more uncompromising measures. Near Geis- 
mar, in Upper Hesse, stood an ancient oak, 
sacred for ages to Donar, or Thor, the god of 
thunder. By the people it was regarded with 
peculiar reverence , and was the rallying-point 
of the assemblies of all the tribes. Again and 
again had Boniface declaimed against such 
senseless worship of the stock of a tree, but 
his sermons had fallen dead on the ears of his 
hearers. He determined, therefore, to remove 
an object of such superstitious reverence from 
the midst of his converts. One day, axe in 
hand, and accompanied by all his clergy, he 
advanced to cut down the offending monarch 
of the forest. The people assembled in thou- 

1 Migne's " Script. Eccles." ssee. viii, p. 707, 



82 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

sands ; many enraged at his interference with 
their traditions, many more confident that an 
instant judgment would certainly strike down 
so daring an offender. But stroke after stroke 
of the axe fell, and it became clear that Thor 
could not defend his own. In vain his vota- 
ries supplicated his vengeance, and besought 
him to vindicate his power. Before long a 
crashing was heard in the topmost boughs, 
and then the leafy idol came down to the 
ground, and split asunder into four quarters. 
Unable to gainsay the reality of his victory, 
the people acknowledged that the missionary 
had prevailed, nor did they interfere when he 
directed that an oratory in honour of St. Peter 
should be constructed out of the remains of 
their old divinity. 

This stumbling-block having been removed 
out of the midst of his people, Boniface found 
the work of evangelization materially facili- 
tated. Throughout Hesse and Thuringia the 
word had free course ; heathen temples dis- 
appeared ; humble churches rose amidst the 
forest glades ; monastic buildings sprung up 
wherever salubrity of soil and the presence of 
running water suggested an inviting site ; the 
land was cleared and brought under the 
plough ; and the sound of prayer and praise 
in humble churches awoke unwonted echoes 
in the forests. The harvest truly was plenteous, 
hut the labourers were few. 1 Boniface deter- 
~" " > St. Matt. ix. 37, 38. 



OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE. 83 

mined, therefore, to invite assistance from his 
native land. In a circular letter addressed, 
in the year a.d. 733, to the bishops, clergy, 
and principal abbots in England, he pointed, 
in moving words, to the wants of his German 
converts. "We beseech you," he writes, 
" that ye will remember us in your prayers to 
God and our Lord Jesus Christ, who would 
have all men to be saved and come to a knowl- 
edge of the truth, that he will vouchsafe to 
convert to the true faith the hearts of the 
heathen Saxons, that they may be delivered 
from the snares of the Evil One, wherewith 
they are now held captive. Have compassion 
on them, brethren. They often say, ■ We are 
of one blood with our brothers in England.' 
Remember they are your kinsmen according 
to the flesh. Remember that the time for 
working is short, for the end of all things is 
at hand, and death cannot praise God, nor can 
any give him thanks in the pit. 1 Aid us, 
then, while yet it is day." * 

In other letters he begs for copies of dif- 
ferent portions of the Divine Word. Thus to 
the abbess Eadburga he writes, to request her 
to send him the Epistles of St. Peter inscribed 
in gilded letters, that he might use them in 
preaching ; to another he writes for copies of 
the Gospels, written in a good, clear hand, 

1 Ps. vi. 5 ; Isa. xxxviii. 18. 

» Migne, " Script, Eccles," sroc, viii. p. 739, 



84 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

suitable for his weak eyes, as also for com- 
mentaries, among which he particularly speci- 
fies those of the venerable Bede. His appeals 
were not ineffectual. Not a few flocked from 
England to rally round him, and even devout 
women were found willing to sacrifice the 
pleasures and comforts of home, and go forth 
to superintend the convents which the mis- 
sionary had inaugurated. As iron sharpeneth 
iron, so the countenances of friends from the 
old country refreshed and invigorated the 
spirits of the good bishop. 

Meanwhile news arrived of the death of 
Pope Gregory II. Still anxious to maintain 
his connexion with the Holy See, Boniface 
wrote to his successor and besought his bless- 
ing on his labours, and in the pall of a metro- 
politan received a marked recognition of his 
work. But not content with a distant corre- 
spondence, he once more, a.d. 738, crossed 
the Alps and sought a personal interview 
with Gregory III. The latter received him 
with more than ordinary respect. He invested 
him with plenary power as legate of the Apos- 
tolic See, and authorized him to visit and or- 
ganize the Bavarian churches. 

With letters accrediting him in his new ca- 
pacity, Boniface returned, in the spring of 
A.D. 739, and after a short stay at Pavia with 
Liutprand, king of the Lombards, commenced 
a thorough visitation of the diocese of Bavaria, 
and added to the solitary see of Passau those 



OF MEDIJEVAL EUROPE* 85 

of Salzburg, Freisingen, and Ratisbon. While 
at Rome, the archbishop had learnt that his 
kinsman Wunibald had come thither from 
England, and that another, Willibald, had 
just returned from the Holy Land and entered 
the monastery of Monte Cassino. He per- 
suaded both of them, however, to join him in 
Germany ; placed Wunibald in charge of 
seven churches in the newly-converted Thu- 
ringia, and stationed Willibald at Eichstadt, 
then a waste forest-land, which Count Suiger 
of Hirsberg had bestowed upon the Church. 
He then wrote to Tetta, abbess of Winburn, 
in Dorsetshire, requesting that Walpurga, a 
sister of Wunibald, as well as any other of his 
countrywomen who might be willing, should 
be sent out to share the work in Germany. 

Walpurga did not shrink from the perils 
of the journey ; with thirty companions sh 
crossed the sea, and after a joyful meeting 
with the archbishop, proceeded to join he: 
brother in Thuringia, and settled for a time 
in a convent beside him there. Afterwards 
she accompanied him to Heidenheim, in the 
wilds of Suevia, where they built a church, 
and, after much difficulty, a double monas- 
tery for monks and nuns. The companions 
also of Walpurga before long presided over 
similar sisterhoods. Thus Lioba, afterwards 
the friend of Hildegard, consort of Charle- 
magne, was stationed at Bischofsheim on the 
Tuber ; Chunichild, another devout sister, in 



86 MISSIONS AND APOSTLBS 

Thuringia; and Chunitrude in Bavaria. It 
was not always easy to reconcile the natives 
to the erection of these outposts of civilization 
in their midst. Many deemed it a profanation 
of the awful silence of the old oak-groves, 
and an insult to the elves and fairies who for 
untold ages had haunted the primeval soli- 
tudes. Many more regarded with much 
suspicion this intrusion on their old hunting- 
grounds, and would have preferred that the 
peace of the wolf and the bear should not be 
disturbed. But as years rolled on, the peace- 
ful lives of the missionaries won their respect 
and reverence, and the sight of waving corn- 
fields reconciled them to the violation of their 
forest sanctuaries. 

In the year a.d. 741 Charles Mart el died, and 
Boniface saw fresh opportunities opened up 
for carrying on and consolidating the labours 
of the various missionary bands. It is true 
that the great Mayor of the Palace never 
thwarted his operations, or declined to recog- 
nize his authority, but he tolerated many of 
the clergy whose lives by no means corre- 
sponded with their sacred profession, and the 
gratitude due to the conqueror of the Saracens 
was considerably marred by his practice of pil- 
laging churches and monasteries from time to 
time, when he wanted money for his numer- 
ous wars. Now that he was dead, the arch- 
bishop's course was more clear, and by reason 
of his great influence over Carloman and Pepin 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUBOPE. 87 

he could develope his plans for a systematic 
organization of the German churches. He be- 
gan by founding four new bishoprics, Wiirz- 
burg, Eichstadt, Bamberg, and Erfurt, and in 
the following year proceeded to call a coun- 
cil of ecclesiastics and the national estates to 
make provision for the moral and spiritual 
superintendence of the newly-formed churches. 
Three years afterwards the Bishop of Cologne 
died, and the idea occurred to Boniface of 
elevating that place to be his metropolitan see, 
especially as it was suitable for a basis of 
liure extended missions in Friesland, where, 
since the death of Willibrord, the work had 
somewhat retrograded. While corresponding 
on the subject with the Pope, an event oc- 
curred which gave an entirely different turn 
to the negotiations. In the same year that 
the Bishop of Cologne died, Gerold, bishop of 
Mayence, was slain in a warlike expedition 
against the Saxons. To console his son Ge- 
willieb for the loss of his father, he was con- 
secrated as his successor, though until now he 
had been only a layman in Carloman's court, 
and had displayed more than ordinary fond- 
ness for the chase. In the following year 
Carloman headed another expedition against 
the Saxons, and Gewillieb followed in his 
train. The armies encamped on either side of 
a river, and, unmindful of his sacred office, 
Gewillieb sent a page to inquire the name of 
the chief who had slain his father. Ascertain- 



88 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

ing it, he sent the same messenger a second 
time to request the chief to meet him in 
friendly conference in the middle of the 
stream. The latter complied, and the two 
rode into the water, and during the conference 
the bishop stabbed the Saxon to the heart. 

This act of treachery was the signal for a 
general engagement, in which Carloman gained 
a decisive victory over the Saxons. Gewillieb 
returned to his diocese. But Boniface could 
not allow so flagrant an infraction of the 
canons enacted in the recent synod to pass 
unrebuked. In the Council, therefore, of tiie 
following year, he made a formal charge 
against the blood-stained bishop. Unable to 
struggle against his authority, Gewillieb was 
obliged to vacate his see, and Mayence became 
the seat of Boniface as metropolitan, where 
he exercised jurisdiction over the dioceses of 
Mayence, Worms, Spires, Tongres, Cologne, 
Utrecht, as well as the newly-evangelized 
tribes whom he had won over to the Christian 
faith. 

In the letter wherein Boniface communi- 
cated to the Pope this alteration in his plans 
he made a request more nearly relating to 
himself. He was now verging on threescore 
years and ten, and his long and incessant 
labours had begun to tell upon his constitu- 
tion. Weighed down with the care of all the 
churches in Germany, he longed for some dim- 
unition of the burdens which pressed upon 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 89 

him, and had already requested to be allowed 
to nominate his successor. This the Pope de- 
clined to allow, but conceded to his age and 
infirmities the permission to select a priest as 
his special assistant, who might share a por- 
tion of his episcopal duties. Increasing weak- 
ness now induced him to reiterate his request, 
and the Pope, while reminding him of the 
words, He that shall endure unto the end, the 
same shall be saved, l agreed that if he could 
find amongst his clergy one in whom he could 
place implicit confidence, he might elevate him 
to the post, and receive his assistance as his 
coadjutor and representative. Upon this Boni- 
face nominated his fellow-countryman and 
disciple, Lullus, and proposed to retire himself 
to the monastery now rising on the banks of 
the river Fulda, where he might spend the 
autumn of his life in watching the beneficial 
results of the labours of the brethren amidst 
the surrounding tribes. 

But while thus toiling in the land of his 
adoption, he was not unmindful of his old 
friends in England. Pleasant memories of 
Crediton and Nutescelle still lay near his 
heart ; and though unable to revisit these 
familiar scenes, he yet maintained a constant 
correspondence with friends in the old country, 
and rejoiced to receive tidings of the welfare 
of the Anglo-Saxon churches, just as he was 

i St. Matt, xxiv. 13. 



90 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

pained to the heart when he heard of any- 
moral or spiritual declension. Thus hearing 
that Ethelbald, king of Mercia, was living in 
gross immorality, he wrote to him in earnest 
terms, and endeavoured to shame him into a 
more consistent life by contrasting his conduct 
with that of the still heathen Saxons in the 
forests of Germany, who, though they had not 
the law of Christianity, yet did by nature the 
things contained in the law, and testified by 
severe punishments their abhorrence of im- 
purity. He also wrote to Archbishop Cuth- 
bert, informing him of the regulations made 
in the recent synods, and urging him to use 
every endeavour to maintain the vitality of 
the Church of their native land. 

Thus, amidst increasing infirmities and 
many causes for anxiety, he yet found time to 
remember old scenes and old friends. But 
very soon the conviction was deepened in his 
own mind that the day of his departure was at 
hand. Lullus had, indeed, been appointed his 
coadjutor in the see of Mayence, but his ap- 
pointment had not yet received the royal sanc- 
tion, and till this was secured Boniface could 
not feel free from anxiety for the welfare of 
his flock. One of his latest letters, therefore, 
was addressed to Fuldrad, Pepin's arch- 
chaplain, soliciting his protection and that of 
his royal master in behalf of his clergy and his 
many ecclesiastical foundations. In this very 
year he had been called upon to restore up- 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUKOPE. 91 

wards of thirty churches in his extensive dio- 
cese, which had been swept away during an 
invasion of the heathen Frisians, and it was 
with gloomy forebodings that he contemplated 
the fate of the German Church, if it was not 
shielded by royal protection. 

"Nearly all my companions/' he writes to 
Fuldrad, "are strangers in this land. Some 
are priests distributed in various places to 
celebrate the offices of the Church and minister 
to the people. Some are monks living in dif- 
ferent monasteries and engaged in teaching 
the young. Some are aged men, who have 
long borne with me the burden and the 
heat of the day. For all these I am full 
of anxiety, lest after my death they should 
be scattered as sheep having no shepherd. 
Let them have a share of your countenance 
and protection, that they may not be dis- 
persed abroad, and that the people dwelling 
on the heathen borders may not lose the law 
of Christ. Suffer also Lullus, my son and 
coadjutor, to preside over the churches, that 
both priests and people may find in him a 
teacher and a guide ; and may God grant that 
he may prove a faithful pastor to the flock. I 
have many reasons for making these requests. 
My clergy on the heathen borders are in deep 
poverty. Bread they can obtain for them- 
selves, but clothing they cannot find here, un- 
less they receive aid from some other quarter 
to enable them to persevere and endure their 



92 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

hardships. Let me know, either by the bearers 
of this letter or under thine own hand, whether 
thou canst promise the granting of my request, 
that, whether I live or die, I may have some 
assurance for the future." 1 

The royal permission that Lullus should 
succeed him had arrived, and his mind was re- 
lieved of its load of anxiety. But again the old 
missionary ardour burnt up as brightly as in 
earlier years. Though upwards of seventy-five 
years of age he determined to make one last ef- 
fort to win over the still pagan portion of Fries- 
land, and to accomplish what Willibrord had 
begun. Bidding, therefore, his successor a 
solemn farewell, he ordered preparations to be 
made for the journey. Something told him he 
should never return, and therefore he desired 
that with his books, amongst which was a 
treatise of St. Ambrose on ' ' The Advantage 
of Death," his shroud also might be put up. 
Then, with a retinue of three priests, three 
deacons, four monks, and forty-one laymen, 
he embarked on board a vessel, a.d. 755, and 
sailed down the Rhine. At Utrecht he was 
joined by Eoban, an old pupil whom he had 
placed in charge of the see, and then together 
they advanced into the eastern part of Frisia, 
and commenced their labours. 

For a time all went well. The missionaries 
were welcomed by several of the tribes, and 

1 Migne, "Script. Eccles." saec. viii. p. 779. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 93 

were enabled to lay the foundation of several 
churches. Gladdened by the accession of 
many converts, they at length reached the 
banks of the river Burde, not far from 
Dockum. It was the month of June, and 
the festival of Whitsunday drew near. 
Boniface had dismissed many who had been 
baptized, bidding them return on the eve of 
Whitsunday to receive the further rite of con- 
firmation. On the morning of the appointed 
day, June 5, the noise could be plainly heard 
of an advancing multitude, and the brandishing 
of spears and the clang of arms told only too 
plainly on what errand they were bound. 
The heathen party, enraged at the success of 
the daring missionary, had selected this day 
for a signal act of vengeance. Some of the 
archbishop's retinue counselled resistance, and 
were already preparing to defend themselves, 
when he stepped forth from his tent, and 
gave orders that no weapon should be lifted, 
but that all should await the crown of martyr- 
dom. " Let us not return evil for evil," said 
he; " the long-expected day has come, and the 
time of our departure is at hand. Strengthen 
ye yourselves in the Lord, and he will redeem 
your souls. Be not afraid of those who can 
only kill the body, but put all your trust in 
God, who will speedily give you an eternal 
reward, and an entrance into his heavenly 
kingdom.' ' 
Calmed by his words, hie followers bravely 



94 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

awaited the onset of their enemies, who rushed 
upon them, and quickly despatched them. 
The archbishop himself, we are told, 1 when 
he saw that his hour was come, took a volume 
of the Gospels, and making it a pillow for his 
head, stretched forth his neck for the blow, 
and in a few moments received his release. 
The heathens speedily ransacked the tents of 
the missionaries; but instead of the treasures 
they had expected, found only the bookcases 
which Boniface had brought with him. These 
they rifled, scattering some of the volumes 
over the plain, and hiding others among the 
marshes, where they remained till they were 
afterwards picked up and reverently removed 
to the monastery of Fulda, together with the 
remains of the great missionary. 

Thus died the father of German Christian 
civilization. A Teuton by language and kin- 
dred, he had been the apostle of Teutons. 
Combining singular conscientiousness with 
earnest piety, dauntless zeal with practical 
energy, he had been enabled to consolidate 
the work of earlier Irish and Anglo-Saxon 
missionaries; he had revived the decaying 
energies of the Frankish Church; he had re- 
stored to her the long dormant activity of the 
Ecclesiastical Council; he had covered central 
and western Germany with the first necessary 

» " Vita S. Bonifacii," Pertz, " Mon. Germ." voL ii. 
p, 251 ri, 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUEOPE. 95 

elements of civilization. Monastic seminaries, 
as Amoneburg and Olirdruf , Fritzlar and Ful- 
da, had risen amidst the Teutonic forests. 
The sees of Salzburg and Freisingen, of Re- 
gensburg and Passau, testified to his care of 
the Church of Bavaria; the see of Erfurt told 
of labours in Thuringia; that of Buraburg, in 
Hesse; that of Wurzburg, in Franconia; while 
his metropolitan see at Mayence, having juris- 
diction over Worms and Spires, Tongres, 
Cologne, and Utrecht, was a sign that even be- 
fore his death the German Church had already 
advanced beyond its first missionary stage. 

Well may Germany look back with gratitude 
to the holy Benedictine, and tell with joy the 
story of the monk of Nutescelle. The roll of 
missionary heroes, since the days of the Apos- 
tles, can point to few more glorious names, to 
none, perhaps, that has added to the dominion 
of the Gospel regions of greater extent or 
value, or that has exerted a more powerful 
influence on the history of the human race. 
In the monastery of Fulda was exposed for 
ages, to hosts of pilgrims, the blood-stained 
copy of St. Ambrose on " The Advantage of 
Death," which the archbishop had brought 
with his shroud to the shore of the Zuyder 
Zee, and the long- continued labours of many 
of his loving pupils and associates will prove 
that in his case, as in so many others, " The 
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
Church." 



96 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

CHAPTER VI. 
ST. CYRIL AND METHODIUS. 

AND now let us turn to the great Sclavonian 
family of nations, whose wide territory ex- 
tended eastward from the Elbe to the sluggish 
waters of the Don, and from the Baltic on the 
north to the Adriatic on the south. 

While for upwards of three centuries the 
Teutonic tribes had been yielding to the in- 
fluences of Christianity, scarcely any impression 
had been made on the vast population which 
clustered together on either side of the 
Danube, and thence spread onwards into the 
very heart of the modern Russian empire. 
They were still rude, warlike, and chiefly 
pastoral tribes, inaccessible alike to the civili- 
zation and the religion of Rome. The Eastern 
Empire had neither a Charlemagne to compel 
by force of arms, nor zealous missionaries like 
those of Germany to penetrate the vast plains 
and spreading morasses of the provinces on 
either side of the Danube, to found abbacies 
and bishoprics, to cultivate the soil and reclaim 
the people. 1 

1. With the death of Anskar, the great 
apostle of Denmark, synchronizes one of the 
earliest missionary efforts made amongst any 
portion of this great family. A map of Europe 
in the sixth century discloses to us the Bul- 

i Milman's " I^atin Christianity," vol. ii. p. 419. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 97 

garians established along the western shore 
of the Euxine, between the Danube and the 
Dnieper. About the year a.d. 680 they had 
moved in a southerly direction into the terri- 
tory known in ancient times as Macedonia and 
Epirus. Here they bestowed their names on 
the Sclavonians, whom they conquered, gradu- 
ally adopted their language and manners, and 
by intermarriage became entirely identified 
with them. 

Unable to return either in a northerly or 
westerly direction, in consequence of the 
formidable barrier which the irruption of more 
powerful nations had interposed in their rear, 
they extended their conquest to the south of 
the Danube, and became involved in continual 
struggles with the Greek emperors. In the 
year a.d. 811 the Emperor Nicephorus ad- 
vanced into the centre of their kingdom, and 
burnt their sovereign's palace. The insult was 
terribly avenged. Three days after his dis- 
astrous success, he was himself surrounded by 
the collected hordes of his barbarous foes, and 
fell ignominiously with the great officers of 
the empire. His head was exposed on a spear, 
and the savage warriors, true to the traditions 
of their Scythian wilderness, fashioned his 
skull into a drinking- cup, enchased it with 
gold, and used it at the celebrations of their 
victories. 

But these border-wars were destined to 
produce more beneficent results. In the early 



98 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

part of the ninth century, when Theodora was 
Empress of Byzantium, a monk named 
Cupharas fell into the hands of the Bulgarian 
prince Bogoris. 1 At the same time, a sister of 
the prince was in captivity at Constantinople, 
and it was proposed by the empress that the 
two captives should be exchanged. During 
the period of her captivity the princess had 
adopted the Christian faith, and on her return 
she laboured diligently to deepen in her 
brother's mind the impression which had 
already been made by the captive monk. 

The prince long remained unmoved by her 
entreaties. At length a famine, during which 
he had vainly appealed to his native deities, 
induced him to have recourse to the God of 
his sister. The result was such as he desired, 
and he was baptized by Photius the patriarch 
of Constantinople, the emperor himself stand- 
ing sponsor by proxy, and the Bulgarian 
prince adopting his name. A short time after- 
wards the prince requested the emperor to 
send him a painter for the decoration of his 
palace. A monk, named Methodius, was ac- 
cordingly sent, and was desired by Bogoris to 
adorn his hall with paintings representing the 
perils of hunting. As he appeared anxious for 
terrible subjects, the monk employed himself 
in painting the scene of the " Last Judgment; " 
and so awful was the representation of the 

* Qedreni " Annates," p. 443. 



OP MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 99 

fate of obstinate heathens, that not only was 
Bogoris himself induced to put away the idols 
he had till now retained, but even many of 
the court were so moved by the sight as to 
desire admission into the Christian Church. 

So averse, however, was the great bulk of 
the nation to the conversion of their chief, 
that his baptism, which was celebrated at 
midnight, was kept a profound secret, the 
disclosure of which was the signal for a 
formidable rebellion in favour of the national 
gods, and Bogoris could only put it down by 
resorting to the severest measures. Photius 
had given to the prince at his baptism a long 
letter, or rather a treatise on Christian doctrine 
and practice, as also on the duties of a sover- 
eign. But its language was far too refined 
for his comprehension ; and his difficulties 
were further increased by the arrival of mis- 
sionaries, Greek, Roman, and Armenian, who 
all sought his union with their respective 
Churches, and all propounded different doc- 
trines. Thus perplexed by their rival claims, and 
unwilling to involve himself in more intimate 
relations with the Byzantine court, Bogoris 
turned to the west for aid, and made an appli- 
cation to Louis II. of Germany, and, at the 
same time, to Nicholas the Pope, requesting 
from both assistance in the conversion of his 
subjects, and from the latter more intelligible 
advice than he had received from the Patriarch 
of Constantinople. 

LLofCi 



100 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

The Pope replied by sending into Bulgaria 
Paul, bishop of Populonia, and Formosus, 
bishop of Portus, with Bibles and other books. 
At the same time he also sent a long letter 
treating of the various subjects on which 
Bogoris had requested advice, under one hun- 
dred and six heads. Respecting the conversion 
of his subjects, he advised the Bulgarian chief 
to abjure all violent methods, and to appeal to 
the weapons of reason only. Apostates, how- 
ever, ought to meet with no toleration, if they 
persisted in refusing obedience to the monitions 
of their spiritual fathers. As to objects of 
idolatrous worship, they ought not to be 
treated with violence, but the company of 
idolaters ought to be avoided, while the cross, 
he suggested, might well take the place of the 
horse-tail as the national standard. All re- 
course to divination, charms, and other super- 
stitious practices, ought to be carefully 
abolished, as also polygamy. As to prayer 
for their forefathers, who had died in unbelief, 
in respect to which the simple prince had re- 
quested advice, such a vain mark of filial 
affection could not be allowed for a moment. 

With these precepts bearing on their spiri- 
tual welfare were mingled others designed to 
soften and civilize their savage manners. The 
Pope exhorted them to greater gentleness in 
the treatment of their slaves, and protested 
against their barbarous code of laws, their use 
of the rack in the case of suspected criminals, 



OP MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 101 

and their too frequent employment of capital 
punishment. Finally, as to the request of the 
prince that a patriarch might be sent him, the 
Pope could not take such an important step 
till he had more accurate information as to 
the numbers of the Bulgarian Church : mean- 
while he sent a bishop, who should be followed 
by others if it was found necessary; and as 
soon as the Church was organized, one with 
the title of archbishop or patriarch was 
promised. 

2. The reception of Christianity in Bulgaria 
paved the way for its admission in other quar- 
ters. The Chazars of the Crimea, the Sclaves 
in the interior of Greece, the Servians, who ex- 
tended from the Danube to the Adriatic, and 
other tribes, were more or less affected by 
Christian influences, though in several cases 
they were weakened by the equally zealous 
efforts of Jewish and Mussulman propa- 
gandists. 

Bat a more important portion of the South- 
Sclavonic area was now to be added to the 
Church. In the early part of the ninth cen- 
tury the Kingdom of Moravia comprised a 
considerable territory, extending from the 
frontiers of Bavaria to the river Drina, and 
from the banks of the Danube to the river 
Styri in Southern Poland. Falling within the 
ever- widening circle of the empire of Charle- 
magne, it had acknowledged that monarch, 
and afterwards his son Louis, as its suze- 



102 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

rains. According to the settled policy of 
these princes, the conquered territory had re- 
ceived a compulsory form of Christianity, and 
a regionary bishop had endeavoured, under 
the auspices of the Archbishop of Passau, to 
bring about the conversion of the people. But 
these efforts had been productive of very par- 
tial results. Foreign priests, unacquainted 
with the Sclavonic language, were not likely 
to attract many to their Latin services, or to 
prevent the great bulk of the people relapsing 
into heathenism. 

But in the year a.d. 863 Moravia made 
great efforts to recover its independence, and 
Rostislav, its ruler, requested the Greek em- 
peror Michael to send him learned men, who 
might translate the Scriptures into the Scla- 
vonic tongue, and arrange the public worship 
upon a definite basis. " Our land is baptized," 
ran the message, " but we have no teachers to 
instruct us, or translate for us the sacred 
books. We do not understand the meaning of 
the Scriptures. Send us teachers who may 
explain them to us and tell us their meaning/ ' 

When the emperor Michael heard this, he 
called together his philosophers, and told them 
the message of the Sclavonic prince. The 
philosophers replied, " There is at Thessa- 
lonica a man named Leon. He has two sons, 
who both know well the Sclavonic tongue, 
and are both clever philosophers. " On hear- 
ing this, the emperor sent to Leon at Thessa- 



OF MEDIEVAL EUBOPE. 103 

lonica, saying, "Send to us thy sons Metho- 
dius and Constantine [Cyril].' ' Whereupon 
Leon straightway sent them ; and when they 
came to the emperor, he said to them, " The 
Sclavonic lands have sent to me, requesting 
teachers, that they may translate for them the 
Holy Scriptures." 1 

Persuaded by the emperor, they therefore 
went into Moravia, and having arrived began 
to compose a Sclavonic alphabet, making use 
in the composition of it of Greek letters, with 
the addition of certain other characters, partly 
Armenian and Hebrew, and partly of their 
own invention ; the whole number amounting 
to forty. They then translated the Gospels 
and Acts of the Apostles, the Psalter, and 
other books, and this innovation on the 
methods hitherto employed by western mis- 
sionaries was blessed with signal success. 
Many of the people rejoiced to hear the word 
of God in their own language, and several 
churches were erected. 

For four years and a half their work went 
on in peace; but soon they found no little 
opposition from the neighbouring German 
clergy, who regarded their translation of the 
Scriptures into the Sclavonic tongue as little 
short of heresy. Intelligence of this strange 
innovation even reached the ears of the Pope, 

*"Vita S. Constantino (Cyrilli), "ActaSS. Bol- 
land." March 3. 



104 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

who summoned Cyril and Methodius to Rome. 
Admitted to an audience with Adrian, they 
recounted the method of their proceedings, and 
offered their creed for examination. Adrian 
pronounced himself satisfied, and appointed 
Methodius metropolitan of Moravia, and Pan- 
nonia, but without any fixed see. 

Thus armed with Papal authority, Methodius 
returned to the scene of his labours, and 
achieved still greater success. But before 
long political troubles arose ; Rostislav was 
betrayed mto the hands of Louis of Germany, 
dethroned, and blinded. Thus deprived of 
the protection of his patron, Methodius was 
constrained to retire from his dangerous post 
into Pannonia. But even here he found him- 
self exposed to constant suspicions, owing to 
his Sclavonic liturgy and Bible, and deemed it 
necessary to repair a second time to Rome and 
defend his conduct before Pope John VIII. 

From this pontiff, after much discussion, he 
succeeded in obtaining a qualified approval of 
his work The Pope's scruples, we are told, 
were removed by remembering the verse in 
the Psalms, " Praise the Lord, all ye nations." 
This verse appeared to him decisive. It could 
hardly mean that the Creator's praise was to 
be restricted to three languages, Hebrew, 
Greek, and Latin. He who formed these lan- 
guages must have formed others for His own 
glory. One condition, however, was annexed 
to the concession, The mass must be cele- 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 105 

brated in one at least of the languages of the 
Church, either Greek or Latin, and the Gospel 
must be read in Latin, and then if it was 
thought necessary translated into the Scla- 
vonian tongue. 

Once more, therefore, Methodius returned 
to Moravia, and in spite of much opposition 
adhered firmly to the great principle that the 
language of each separate nation is not to 
give place in public worship to a sacred lan- 
guage peculiar to the clergy, but is itself 
adapted alike for public instruction and for 
private reading. But after his death, about 
A.D. 885, the opposition of the German party 
increased greatly, and many of the Sclavonic 
clergy were driven out of Moravia. 

Before long Moravia was invaded by the 
pagan Magyars or Hungarians, whose ravages 
at this period in Bavaria, Germany, and South- 
ern France, presented one of the most serious 
obstacles to the establishment of Christianity. 
More terrible than the Saracen and the North- 
ern viking, inexhaustible in number, superior 
to all the Scythian hordes in military prowess- 
they were identified by fear-stricken Christen, 
dom with Gog and Magog, the forerunners of 
the dissolution of the world. From their de- 
vastations the wretched people of Moravia 
suffered terribly, and on the restoration of 
order found themselves united to the kingdom 
of Bohemia. 

3. From Moravia, therefore, let us turn in 



106 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

an easterly direction towards those Scythian 
wilds and level steppes, where, in a.d. 862, 
arose the Russian kingdom of Ruric the Nor- 
man ; and where, while the Western Church 
was contemplating with awe and terror the 
gradual approach of the Day of Doom, the 
Eastern Church " silently and almost uncon- 
sciously bore into the world her mightiest off- 
spring." l 

In a.d. 955 the Princess Olga, accompanied 
by a numerous retinue, left Kieff on a journey 
to the Byzantine capital. There she was in- 
duced to embrace Christianity, and returning 
to her native land exerted herself with exem- 
plary diligence to instil the doctrines of her 
new creed into the mind of her son Swiatoslav. 
But on this prince her exhortations produced 
little or no effect. He was the very type of 
the rough Varangian warrior. "Wrapped in 
a bearskin," writes Gibbon, "he usually slept 
on the ground, his head reclining on a saddle. 
His diet was coarse and frugal, and, like the 
heroes of Homer, his meat (it was often horse- 
flesh) was boiled or roasted on the coals." 8 
For him the gods of his ancestors were suffi- 
cient, and the entreaties of his mother were 
entirely thrown away. 

Her grandson Vladimir seemed likely to 
prove a more docile pupil, though the zeal he 



1 Stanley's " Eastern Church, " p. 294. 

a Gibbon's " Decline and Fall," vol. vii. p. 98. 



OP MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 107 

subsequently displayed for the savage idola- 
tries of his countrymen was not for some time 
calculated to inspire much confidence. In his 
reign the only two Christian martyrs of the 
Russian chroniclers were put to death by the 
fury of the people, because one of them, from 
natural affection, had refused to give up his 
son, when he had been devoted by Vladimir 
to be offered as a sacrifice to Peroun. 1 

But before long the desire of converting so 
powerful a chief attracted missionaries from 
many quarters. 

First, according to the Russian chronicler, 
came the Mahometan Bulgarians from the 
Volga, but ' ' the mercy of Providence inspired 
Vladimir to give them a decided refusal." 

Then appeared Jews from amongst the 
Chazars, priding themselves on their religion, 
and telling many stories of the ancient glories 
of Jerusalem. ■ * But where is your country ? " 
said the prince. "It is ruined bv the wrath 
of God for the sins of our fathers," was the 
reply. Thereupon the interview was cut short 
by the decisive answer, ' ' How can I embrace 
the faith of a people whom their God has ut- 
terly abandoned ? " 

Next appeared Western doctors from Ger- 
many, who would have had the prince em- 
brace the creed of Western Christendom. But 



1 Mouravieff's "Church of Russia," translated by 
Blackmore, p. 10. 



108 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

Vladimir knew of no form of Christianity save 
such as was taught at Byzantium. 

Last of all came a teacher from Greece. He 
reasoned with Vladimir long and earnestly, 
and learning that he had received emissaries 
from the Jews, who accused the Christians of 
worshipping a God who had been crucified, he 
took the opportunity of relating the true ac- 
count from beginning to end. Then he went on 
to speak of judgment to come, and showed the 
prince on a tablet the scene of the Last Day. On 
the right were the good going into everlasting 
joy; on the left were the wicked departing 
into eternal fire. "Happy are those on the 
right,' ' said Vladimir; "woe to the sinners 
who are on the left." "If thou wishest to 
enter into happiness with those on the right, w 
replied the missionary, "consent to be bap- 
tized/' 1 

The prince reflected in silence, but deferred 
his decision. Next year, however, he sent for 
certain of his nobles, and informed them of 
the different deputations he had received. 
"Everyman praises his own religion," said 
they; "send, therefore, certain of thy court 
to visit the different churches, and bring back 
word." 

Messengers were accordingly despatched to 
the Jews and Mahometans, as also to the Ger- 
man and Eastern churches. They returned 

1 Mouravieff, p. 11. 



OP MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 109 

a very unfavourable report of all, except 
only the Church of Constantinople. Of this 
they could not say enough. When they 
visited the Byzantine capital, they were 
conducted to the Church of St. Sophia, then 
perhaps one of the finest ecclesiastical struc- 
tures in the world. The patriarch himself 
celebrated the Liturgy with the utmost pomp 
and magnificence. The gorgeous processions, 
the music, the chanting, the appearance of 
the deacons and sub-deacons with lighted 
torches and white linen wings on their shoul- 
ders, before whom the people prostrated them- 
selves, crying, "Kyrie eleison," — all this, so 
utterly different from anything they had ever 
witnessed amidst their own wild steppes, had 
such an overpowering effect on the Russian 
envoys, that on their return to Vladimir they 
spoke not a word in favour of the other re- 
ligions, but of the Greek Church they could 
not say enough. 

"When we stood in the temple/' said they, 
" we did not know where we were, for there 
is nothing else like it upon earth. There in 
truth God has his dwelling with men, and we 
can never forget the beauty we saw there. 
No one who has once tasted sweets will after- 
wards take that which is bitter, nor can we any 
longer abide in heathenism." Thereupon the 
Boyars said to Vladimir, " If the religion of 
the Greeks had not been good, your grand- 
mother Olga, who was the wisest of women, 



110 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

would not have embraced it." The weight of 
the name of Olga decided her grandson, and 
he said no more in answer than these words, 
" Where shall we be baptized ? " l 

Still he hesitated before taking so important 
a step, and " led by a sense which had not yet 
been purged by grace," to adopt the words of 
the Russian chronicler, he thought fit to over- 
awe the country where he intended to receive 
the new faith, and laid siege to Cherson in the 
Tauride. The siege was long and obstinate. 
At length, by means of an arrow shot from the 
town, a priest informed the Russian chief that 
its safety depended on cutting off the supply 
of water from the aqueducts. Elated at the 
prospect of success, V]adimir vowed to be bap- 
tized as soon as he should be master of the 
place. His wish was gratified, and forthwith 
he sent ambassadors to Constantinople to de- 
mand the hand of Anne, sister of the Emperor 
Basil. 

Compliance ^was promised on condition of 
his accepting Christianity. Vladimir declared 
his consent, and the sister of the emperor was 
constrained to go, and she sailed from Cher- 
son accompanied by a large body of clergy. 
Her arrival hastened the baptism of the prince, 
which, according to the Russian authority, 
was not unaccompanied by miracle. Vladimir 
was suffering from complaint of the eyes when 

1 I&ouravieff, pp. 12 and 353, 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE, 111 

his new consort reached him, but no sooner 
had he risen from the font cleansed of the 
leprosy of his heathenism, than the bishop of 
Cherson laid his hands upon his eyes, and 
his sight was restored, while the prince ex- 
claimed, ' * Now have I seen the true God. " 

Thereupon many of his suite consented to 
follow his example ; and shortly afterwards, 
accompanied by the Greek clergy, he returned 
to Kieff, one of the great centres of the Sla- 
vonic religion, and forthwith ordered that his 
twelve sons should be baptized, and proceeded 
to destroy all the monuments of heathenism. 
The huge idol Peroun was dragged from its 
temple at a horse's tail, scourged by twelve 
mounted pursuers, and then flung into the 
Dnieper. "The people/ ' we are told, "at 
first followed their idol down the stream, but 
were soon quieted when they saw it had no 
power to help itself. " 

Thus successful, Vladimir felt encouraged 
to take a further step, and gave orders for the 
immediate baptism of his people. "Who- 
ever on the morrow," ran the proclamation, 
" shall not repair to the river, whether rich or 
poor, I shall hold him for my enemy. " On 
the word all the inhabitants, with their wives 
and children, flocked in crowds to the Dnieper, 
and there, in the words of Nestor, "some 
stood in the water up to their necks, others up 
to their breasts, holding their young children 
jn their arms, while the priests read the prayers 



112 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

from the shores, naming at once whole com- 
panies by the same name." Vladimir, trans- 
ported at the sight, cried out, " O great God, 
who hast made heaven and earth, look down 
upon thy new people ; grant unto them, O Lord, 
to know thee the true God, as thou hast been 
made known to Christian lands, and confirm 
in them a true and unfailing faith; and assist 
me, O Lord, against my enemy that opposes 
me, that, trusting in thee and in thy power, I 
may overcome all his wiles." 

The spot where the temple of Peroun had 
stood now became the site of the Church of St * 
Basil, and the Greek priests were encouraged 
by Vladimir in erecting others throughout the 
towns and villages of his realm. The close of 
the tenth century saw Michael the first metro- 
politan travelling from place to place, baptiz- 
ing and instructing the people. Churches 
were built, the choral music and service books 
of Constantinople were introduced, as also the 
Greek canon law. Before long schools also 
arose, and the people became familiar with 
the Sclavonic Scriptures and Liturgy, which 
the labours of Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria 
and Moravia had made ready to their hands. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 113 



CHAPTER VII. 

RETROSPECT AND REFLECTIONS. 

With this notice we must close our account 
of some of the more eminent Apostles of Me- 
diaeval Europe. 

At this point, therefore, it may not be amiss 
to look back and gather up some of the chief 
lessons which their lives enforce, and that 
with special reference to the missionary history 
of the Middle Ages. 

I. And first let us make a remark respecting 
the Mediaeval period itself. 

It is always useful to bear in mind that this 
period was one of transition, that it was not 
ultimate but intermediate and preliminary. 
Trite and commonplace as the observation may 
seem, it is one which deserves recollection, if 
we would form a just estimate of the efforts 
then made to spread a knowledge of Christian- 
ity. 

We started at that point when the Christian 
Church had absorbed into herself whatever was 
good and valuable in the culture of the Greek 
and Roman world. We have paused before 
the dawn of the bright morning of the last 
three hundred years, which have given birth to 
what has been not inaptly called Teutonic, as 
contrasted with Latin, Christianity. 

The missionary history, therefore, of the* 
Middle Ages partook of the characteristics of 



114 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

the Mediaeval period itself. To a great extent 
it was disciplinary and preparatory. During 
the earlier portion of the period, the Church 
was called upon to undertake one of the most 
difficult tasks that could have been presented 
to her energies and her zeal. In her contact 
with the world she herself had lost somewhat 
of her original simplicity, and the form of 
Christianity which she presented to the new 
races for their reception was not that of purer 
and Apostolic times. The stage of culture 
which the nations had reached whom she was 
called to civilize was low ; they were little 
capable of discerning the outward from the 
inward, the letter from the spirit ; and before 
learning the simplest lesson of the Christian 
faith, they had to unlearn a ferocity and a law- 
lessness which made them at first a terror 
even to their teachers. 

However defective, therefore, may have 
been the development obtained during this 
period, it may be pleaded that on the one hand 
it was almost inevitable from the nature of the 
case, and on the other that it was adapted as 
a transitionary stage for the childhood of the 
new races. They needed parental discipline 
before they could learn or value independence. 
They needed to be governed before they could 
govern themselves. 

At the first promulgation of Christianity, the 
old Roman empire had, in the providence of 
GhxL, supplied the framework that held to- 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 115 

gether the various masses of social life, which 
the Gospel was intended to pervade. During 
the Mediaeval period, a great Latin Christian 
empire was, if not needed, at least overruled, 
to address the nations in language legal and 
formal, and, so to speak, to naturalize Chris- 
tianity in the West. 

The Primitive Church has been compared to 
the Patriarchal period of Jewish history, and 
the Mediaeval Church to the Mosaic Dispensa- 
tion. 1 If the latter comparison is allowed, we 
may conclude that like that Dispensation the 
Mediaeval Church was destined, after perform- 
ing its office of legal discipline, to vanish away; 
but that, while needed, it was "of great con- 
sequence and undeniable aptitude." "The 
task, " observes Professor Ranke, * ' of bending 
the refractory spirit of the Northern tribes to 
the pure laws of Christian truth was no light 
one. Wedded, as these nations were, to their 
long- cherished superstitions, the religious ele- 
ment required a large predominance before it 
could gain possession of the German character ; 
but by this predominance that close union of 
Latin and German elements was effected, on 
which is based the character of Europe in later 
times. There is a spirit of community in the 
modern world which has always been regarded 
as the basis of its progressive improvement, 

1 Dean Stanley's " Sermons on the Apostolic Age,'* 
p. 105. 



116 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

whether in religion, politics, manners, social 
life, or literature. To bring about this com- 
munity it was necessary that the Western na- 
tions should at one period constitute what may 
be called a single politico-ecclesiastical state." 1 

II. If from this notice of the Mediaeval 
period itself we turn to its most eminent 
Apostles, we cannot but be struck with the 
immense influence of individual energy and 
the subduing force of personal character. 

Around individuals penetrated with Chris- 
tian zeal and self-denial centred not merely the 
life, but the very existence of the Churches of 
Europe. In the most troubled epochs of these 
troublous times they always appeared to do the 
work of their day and their generation. 

lam with you always , even to the end of the 
world, said the ascending Saviour to his first 
Apostles. 2 

Again and again we have seen that promise 
fulfilled. 

"While the Roman world was sinking in an 
abyss of decrepitude, and the continent of 
Europe was a scene of the wildest disorder 
and confusion, still there were men, like Ul- 
philas and Severinus, to sow amongst the new 
races the seeds of civilization, before they took 
up their positions on the ruins of the Empire. 

When the light of the Frankish Church 



* Ranke's *' History of the Popes,'* i. p, 22. 
a St. Matt, xxviii. 20, 



OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE. 117 

grew dim, and its missionary zeal waxed cold, 
a beacon was kindled in the secluded Celtic 
Churches of Ireland and Scotland, whence, in 
the words of Alcuin, "the light of truth might 
give shine to many parts of the world," and 
the disciples of St. Columba might go forth in 
troops to the forests of Switzerland and of 
Southern Germany. 

When the British Church, in our own 
island, failed to evangelize her Teutonic in- 
vaders, a Gregory was ready to send an Au- 
gustine to her shores, whose disciples laboured 
here side by side with the Celtic missionaries 
from Iona, till the conversion of the Anglo- 
Saxon kingdoms was complete. 

Then when the Teuton of the Continent was 
crying from his native forests, like the Mace- 
donian of old to the great Apostle of the Gen- 
tiles, Gome over and help us, l the members of 
the churches which Roman and Celtic mis- 
sionaries had founded throughout the length 
and breadth of England were prepared to go 
forth and emulate the zeal which had already 
founded the monasteries of Luxeuil and St. 
Gall, and, Teutons themselves, to evangelize 
the Teutons of Friesland and Northern Ger- 
many. 

When again an opportunity was offered of 
carrying the word into the forests of Central 
Germany, a Win f rid was raised up to go forth 

1 Acts xvi. 9. 



118 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

and labour with unwearied zeal in Thuringia 
and Hessia, to persuade numbers of devoted 
women to leave their homes in England and 
join him in the work, and to bequeath his 
martyr spirit to numerous scholars and disci- 
ples, like Gregory of Utrecht and Sturmi of 
Fulda. 

When, lastly, on the death of Charlemagne, 
the barks of the terrible Northmen were 
prowling round every coast, and carrying 
havoc and desolation into the fairest fields of 
France and England, even then an Anskar 
was found willing to go forth with dauntless 
bravery and lay the foundations of the 
Churches of Denmark and Sweden, carrying 
the Gospel into the very home of the Scandi- 
navian Vikings. 

It was the same with the Sclavonic nations. 
A Cyril and a Methodius were prepared to 
preach the word in Bohemia and Moravia, a 
Vicelin to toil amidst perpetual discourage- 
ments among the savage Wends, a Meinhard 
to labour in Livonia, an Adalbert to suffer 
martyrdom in Prussia, an Otho to penetrate 
into the furthest recesses of fanatical Pome- 
rania. 

Nay, when the crusading spirit had sunk 
deeply into the heart of European society, and 
the patience of an Anskar was exchanged for 
the fiery zeal of the Champion of the Cross, 
even then there was a Raymund Lull to pro- 
test against propagandism by the sword, to 



OF MEDIJEYAL EUROPE. 119 

develop a more excellent way 1 towards winning 
over the Moslem warriors than the argument 
of force, and to seal his constancy with his 
blood outside the gates of Bugia. 

Thus, even in the darkest times, there were 
ever some streaks of light, and the leaven 
destined to quicken the whole lump of society- 
was never altogether inert or ineffectual. 
Take away these men, blot out their influence, 
and how materially would events have varied, 
how much the entire history of the Middle 
Ages would have been altered ! They had 
their defects, the defects of their day and 
generation. But it becomes us always to 
speak with gratitude and kindness of men who 
counted not their lives dear unto them if they 
might win over to the truth the Teuton and 
the Sclave, and to whom modern Europe owes 
much of its present civilization. 

III. If we turn from the agents themselves 
to the work they accomplished, we cannot 
but notice a striking contrast between the 
Mediaeval and Apostolic missions. 

During the Apostolic period, we are chiefly 
struck by the presence of direct miraculous 
agency and spiritual gifts, and by the cor- 
responding absence of temporal aid. 

In the Sub-apostolic age, again, Christianity 
found a point of contact with the Greek and 
Roman mind, as well as a distinct national 

1 1 Cor. xii. 31. 



120 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

culture which it could purify and transfigure. 
It found also a language long prepared for its 
service, in which it could everywhere address 
itself to the intellect and the reason as well as 
to the conscience of its hearers. 

It was the season, too, of its first love. 1 
Hence the attitude of complete antagonism of 
its first believers towards paganism, their re- 
pudiation of all compromise, their studious re- 
nunciation of all heathen principles and prac- 
tices. It was the season also of the Church's 
struggle, always for toleration, sometimes for 
existence. Hence her conversions were indi- 
vidual rather than national ; the new faith 
made its way from below rather than from 
above ; not many wise, not many mighty, not 
many noble were called. 2 

But even before the beginning of the period, 
whose chief Apostles we have chronicled, all 
this had passed away c 

The consolation of the slave or of the fugitive 
in the catacombs had become the creed of the 
Emperor. Instead of pleading for toleration, 
the Church herself had learnt to be aggressive. 
The Greek Fathers had moulded her Creeds, 
Rome had regulated her laws, and bequeathed 
to her its own love of organization and gov- 
ernment. No longer in dread of the caprice 
or malice of the occupant of the imperial 
throne, she awaited, with fixed institutions, 

* Rev. ii. 4. a 1 Cor. i. 20. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 121 

magistrates, and laws, the incoming of the 
new races. 

For a while, indeed, her own safety seemed 
in peril ; but when the agitated elements of 
society had been calmed, she emerged to pre- 
sent to the world the single stable institution 
that had survived the shock. 

In her dealings, therefore, with the new 
races, there was a great change from the mis- 
sions of the first age. Whereas the latter had, 
from the necessity of the case, worked up- 
wards from below, till at length the number 
of converts became too great and too influen- 
tial to be ignored by the ruler, and the voice 
from the catacombs found an echo in the 
palace, during the Mediaeval period all this 
was reversed. 

With an almost monotonous uniformity, in 
Ireland and England, in Southern and in 
Northern Germany, among the Sclavonic no 
less than the Scandinavian nations, the con- 
version of the people followed that of the king 
or chief. 

The fourth century, indeed, presents the 
somewhat anomalous spectacle of the emperor 
Constantine, as yet unbaptized, taking an ac- 
tive part in Christian preaching. 1 But turn 
where we will in this age, we cannot but be 
struck by the religious aspect of the temporal 
rule. The Apostle of Ireland addresses him- 

1 Dean Stanley's " Eastern Church," p^ 198. 



122 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

self to Irish, Columba, the founder of Iona, to 
Pictish princes. Columbanus rebukes Thierri 
and Brunehaut; Boniface discusses plans for 
his Thuringian missions in the courts of Aus- 
trasian kings; his disciples follow in the track 
of Charlemagne's victorious armies. It is with 
a prince of Denmark that Anskar embarks on 
his first missionary voyage. It is to Bogoris, 
the Bulgarian chief, that Methodius displays 
the awful picture of the Judgment Day. A 
Polish duke supplies all the necessities of 
Otho, the Apostle of Pomerania, while another 
welcomes him on entering the land he had 
come to evangelize, and offers to protect him 
with a regiment of soldiers. Moreover, if any- 
thing were wanting to complete the picture, it 
is supplied by the record of the visit of the 
missionaries of the Eastern Church to the 
Russian court, where the religious aspect of 
the temporal ruler finds its highest expression, 
and Vladimir bears the same title as the em- 
peror Constantine, Isapostolos, Vladimir, equal 
to an apostle. 

Various explanations have been offered to 
account for this feature of the Mediaeval mis- 
sions. 

Some have ascribed it to the deliberate 
policy of the missionaries themselves. Ot hers 
have dwelt on the aristocratic character of 
society amongst the Germanic tribes, and have 
drawn attention to the docile and imitative 
tendencies of the Sclavonic races, 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 123 

But we need not linger over these specula- 
tions. The success of the Mediaeval mission- 
ary did not more depend on the will of princes 
than that of the Reformation movement in 
every country that became Protestant in the 
sixteenth century. St. Boniface only expresses 
the experience of many eminent missionaries 
of more recent times when he writes, ' ■ With- 
out the patronage of the Frankish chiefs, I 
can neither govern the people, exercise disci- 
pline over the clergy and monks, nor prohibit 
heathen writers. " 

And if these national conversions depended 
so much on the smile or favour of the prince, 
we cannot fail to observe how often the con- 
version of the prince himself was due to his 
alliance in marriage with a Christian queen. 
The story of Clovis and Clotilda, of Ethelbert 
and Bertha, of Vladimir and Anne, repeats 
itself again and again. 

It has been noticed that the interpretation 
so generally adopted by early Christian writers 
of the words of St. Paul, What knowest thou, 
wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband f 
or how knowest thou, husband, whether thou 
shalt save thy wife ? l exercised no small influ- 
ence in early times in promoting the conversion 
of unbelieving husbands by believing wives. 
At any rate, the saying of St. Chrysostom, that 
"no teacher has so much effect in conversion 

1 1 Cor. vii. 16. 



124 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

as a wife," lias been verified not only in the 
instance of the two great kingdoms of France 
and England, but accounts, in some measure, 
for these rapid conversions of whole tribes, 
which form so characteristic a feature in the 
missionary annals of this period. The inter- 
marriage of the Goths with their Christian 
captives in the days of Ulphilas, of the Sax- 
ons with the conquered Britons in England, 
of the Northmen with the Franks in Nor- 
mandy, hints at a solution of what is other- 
wise perplexing. In the latter case, moreover, 
it suggests a reason why the followers of 
Rollo ceased to be Teutons as well as Pagans, 
why they became Frenchmen as well as Chris- 
tians. 1 

IV. Another feature likewise demands at- 
tention, namely, the prominence in the execu- 
tion of the work of the Monastic Orders. 

We have glanced at the physical necessities, 
so to speak, which dictated the employment of 
these heroic pioneers. We have seen how 
many of the fairest provinces of the Roman 
empire, groaning under the weight of merci- 
less taxation, had wellnigh ceased to till the 
soil ; how many tracts had been utterly depop- 
ulated by the ceaseless levies for the imperial 
armies; how before the inroad of barbarous 
invaders village life had ceased, and towns, 
forsaken by their inhabitants, had gradually 

» MUman's " Latin Christianity," ii. 434. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 125 

disappeared; how dense woods had arisen, and 
completely concealing the ruins of temples 
and baths, villas and streets, spread onwards 
till at length they joined the immense and im- 
penetrable forests which covered the whole 
extent of France, Switzerland, Belgium, and 
both banks of the Rhine. 

The question, we have said, was, Who 
would plunge into the gloom of these forests, 
proclaim the word of life to the wild tribes 
that dwelt around them, and teach them the 
first principles of civilization ? 

It was a momentous question, but the lives 
of the Apostles of Mediaeval Europe tell us 
how it was answered. Armed with none of 
the inventions of modern industry, strong only 
in invisible protection, the monastery sent 
forth hundreds of devoted men to undertake 
the work. "It is an ugly thing for an un- 
armed man," writes Professor Kingsley, "to 
traverse without compass the bush of Aus- 
tralia or New Zealand, where there are no 
wild beasts. But it was uglier still to start 
out under the dark roof of those primaeval 
Germanic forests. Knights, when they rode 
thither, went armed cap-a-pie, like Sintram 
through the dark valley, trusting in God and 
their good swords. Chapmen and merchants 
stole through it by a few tracks in great com- 
panies, armed with bill and bow. Peasants 
ventured into it a few miles, to cut timber, and 
find forage for their swine, and whispered wild 



126 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

legends of the ugly things therein — and some- 
times, too , never came home. Away it stretched, 
from the fair Rhineland, wave after wave of 
oak and alder, beech and pine, God alone knew 
how far, into the land of night and wonder, 
and the infinite unknown, full of elk and 
bison, bear and wolf, lynx and glutton, and 
perhaps of worse beasts still." 1 

But the disciples of St. Columba and St. 
Boniface did not hesitate to penetrate the dark- 
ness of these primaeval forests, there to live 
and pray and study, and till the waste. 

Strange indeed, passing strange, must these 
pioneers of civilization have appeared to 
heathen Suevians and Allmannen. They them- 
selves knew of no power save physical force. 
These wanderers seemed to hold physical force 
in utter contempt. They themselves acknow- 
ledged no influence but that of the sword and 
the battle-axe, the club and the spear. These sol- 
diers of an Invisible King seemed to acknowl- 
edge no such weapons in their warfare. And 
yet out of weakness they were made strong. 
Where others trembled, they showed no fear; 
where others ventured nothing, they ventured 
everything. It was clear that they made little 
of Frankish count or Suevian king. In their 
palaces they were no reeds shaken by the 
wind. A Thierri quailed before them. A 



* " The Monks and the Heathen," Good Words, 
Jan. 1863. 



OF, MEDIAEVAL EUBOPE. 127 

Brunehaut could not endure their pure and 
upright life. A Radbod was forced to ac- 
knowledge the fearlessness with which they 
rebuked cruelty and barbarity. Such men the 
simple people could not but revere, and believe 
to be possessed of mysterious power. They 
might at times be austere; they might with 
more zeal than love protest against their idol- 
atries; but to the widow and the orphan, to 
the lame and the blind, to the sick and the 
afflicted, they were ever fast and patient 
friends, and for them they ever had words of 
true comfort and mysterious consolation. 

The wisdom of Providence assigned the 
order in which these Apostles of Civilization 
were to enter upon the work. 

The Celtic disciple of St. Columba went 
first. The Anglo-Saxon disciple of St. Boni- 
face followed. Eager, ardent, impetuous, the 
Celtic anchorites seemed to take the Continent 
by storm. "With a dauntless zeal that nothing 
could check, an enthusiasm that nothing could 
stay, they flung themselves into the gloomiest 
solitudes of Switzerland and Belgium, and be- 
fore long their wooden huts made way for the 
statelier buildings of Luxeuil and St. Gall. 

These Celtic pioneers laid the foundations. 
The disciples of St. Boniface raised the super- 
structure. With practised eye they sought 
out the proper site for their monastic home, 
saw that it occupied a central position with 
reference to the tribes amongst whom they pro- 



128 missIonjTakd apostles 

posed to labour, that it possessed a fertile soil, 
that it was near some friendly watercourse. , 

These points secured, the word was given, 
the trees were felled, the forest was cleared, 
the monastery arose. Soon the voice of prayer 
and praise was heard in those gloomy soli- 
tudes. The thrilling chant and plaintive lit- 
any awoke unwonted echoes amidst the forest 
glades. The brethren were never idle. While 
some educated children, whom they had re- 
deemed from death or torture, others copied 
manuscripts, or toiled over the illuminated 
missal, or transcribed a Gospel ; others culti- 
vated the soil, guided the plough, planted the 
apple-tree and the vine, arranged the bee-hives, 
erected the water-mill, opened the mine, and 
thus presented to the eyes of men the king- 
dom of Christ as the kingdom of One, who 
had redeemed the bodies no less than the souls 
of His creatures. 

Such were the modes in which these Apos- 
tles of Mediaeval Europe accomplished the 
work of their day and their generation. 

Their numbers, their union, their singular 
habits, could not fail to make a deep impres- 
sion on the heathen tribes whom they ad- 
dressed. The contrast between the teachers 
and the taught was sharp and startling. On 
the one side was a horror of all dependence, 
and an indomitable spirit of restlessness ; on 
the other was a life of continued self -sacrifice 
and obedience. 



OF MEDIJEVAL EUROPE. 129 

Grant that the institutions which they 
founded, though " clear in the spring," proved 
"miry in the stream ; " grant that, in the 
days of their prosperity and ease, when the 
original necessities which had called them 
forth had ceased to operate, they forgot their 
original simplicity, and became too often a by- 
word and a proverb ; yet we must never for- 
get what European civilization owes to the 
self-devotion of a Columbanus and a Gallus, a 
Boniface and a Sturmi. * * The monks,'' writes 
Livingstone, "did not disdain to hold the 
plough. They introduced fruit-trees, flowers, 
vegetables, in addition to teaching and eman- 
cipating the serfs. Their monasteries were 
mission -stations which resembled ours in being 
dispensaries for the sick, almshouses for the 
poor, and nurseries of learning. Can we learn 
nothing from them in their prosperity as the 
schools of Europe, and see naught in their 
history but the pollution and laziness of their 
decay ? " 



CHAPTER VIII. 

RETROSPECT AND REFLECTIONS. 

It is impossible to close a review, however 
brief, of the work of the Apostles of Mediaeval 
Europe, without noticing one or two addi- 
tional points. 

I. And the first which calls for remark is 



130 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

the national and seemingly indiscriminate bap- 
tisms which the influence of various princes 
secured, and the Church did not hesitate to 
administer. 

It is obvious that in the Middle Ages neces- 
sity would often dictate a departure from ordi- 
nary rules. But it is hardly possible to read 
of the multitudes admitted to baptism after a 
very limited preparation without suspecting 
that there was at times a far greater anxiety 
to multiply the number than to enlighten the 
minds of the proselytes. 

It is true, indeed, that we ought to bear in 
mind the fewness of the teachers, the great 
masses of the people, and the general igno- 
rance ; still the habitual practice of thus ad- 
ministering the sacred rite must have been the 
reverse of an adequate preservative against 
the danger of relapse. The baptism of the 
ten thousand subjects of Ethelbert in the 
waters of the Swale, of the many thousand 
Teutons by the Apostle of Germany, of the 
Russians in the waters of the Dnieper, of the 
Pomeranians by Bishop Otho, the absence of 
adequate preparation, and the influence of the 
prince or king, will cause such administra- 
tions to be regarded by some as a subject for a 
compassionate smile rather than for regard or 
forgiveness. 

But in forming a fair opinion on the sub- 
ject, it ought to be borne in mind that the 
Mediaeval missionaries had to contend with 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 131 

unusual difficulties. To say nothing of the 
relaxed condition of society, of the constant 
wars which were ever setting tribe against tribe 
and people against people, of the fact that the 
administrators of the baptismal rite were in 
many cases themselves but recently converted, 
there were other and more formidable diffi- 
culties in regard to the recipients of the rite 
themselves. 

For they had known nothing of that long 
education under a preliminary Dispensation, 
which had exerted its influences over those 
three thousand converts whom the Apostle 
Peter admitted into the Church in one day. 
The revelation of an external law and the 
warnings of the prophets had not made 
Monotheism natural to them, or taught, "here 
a little, and there a little, line upon line, and 
precept upon precept," those elementary re- 
ligious truths which appear to us so easy to 
apprehend, because we have lived from child- 
hood in an atmosphere permeated with their 
influence. 

They were not proselytes of the gate, to 
whom, like the Ethiopian eunuch, a Philip 
could explain the true meaning of sacred 
prophecy, and receive into the Christian 
Church on the simplest profession of belief. 
Neither were they in a condition analogous to 
that of the Graeco-Roman world at the first 
promulgation of the faith, convinced of its 
inability to regenerate itself, and wearied of 



132 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

its long tossing on the ocean of Uncertainty. 
The utter failure of Art, and Science, and 
Philosophy to solve the deepest problems of 
life, had not brought them as proselytes in 
riper years to " the True Philosophy." 

Infants alike in knowledge and civilization, 
they were admitted to infant baptism by 
teachers themselves in many cases but imper- 
fectly educated, whose whole theology was 
often contained in the Creed and the Lord's 
Prayer. It was "the day of small things/' 
and the men who did not despise that day, but 
acted up to the extent of their knowledge, 
hoping for a future day of greater things, ac- 
complished no mean work, and reaped no in- 
considerable harvest. 

II. We have abundant evidence, however, 
of the use of a course of instruction by the 
Mediaeval missionaries as preparatory to bap- 
tism, which was far from being unworthy of 
its object. Their biographers, it is true, have 
not given us such full and complete informa- 
tion on the subject as might have been desired; 
still such information as we possess is full of 
interest. 

Much, indeed, has been said of a peculiar 
natural and national predisposition on the part 
of the Teutonic nations towards Christianity. 

We admit freely that under the poetic 
legends of Teutonic mythology there lay a 
residuum of truth, to which the new faith 
could attach itself, and which it could trans- 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 133 

figure. We admit that in its ideas respect- 
ing the origin of the world, in its distorted 
legends of the Creation, in its conception, 
however much afterwards overlaid, of a great 
Allfadir, in its belief in the final triumph of 
good over evil, in its traditions of a conflict 
between Balder, the lord of light and life, and 
the goddess of death, and in its hope of an 
ultimate restoration of all things, there may 
have been scattered seeds which Christianity 
might quicken and make fruitful. Yet it 
must be conceded that there were few amongst 
the missionaries of this period who could, 
even if they had been willing, have seen the 
matter in this light. 

That largeness of heart, that more than 
human wisdom, which suggested to the great 
Apostle of the Gentiles, when he stood on 
Mars Hill, the propriety of "taking his 
smooth stone," as Chrysostom expresses it, 
"out of the Athenians' own brook, " and of 
finding a common ground between himself and 
those whom he addressed, are qualities rare at 
all times, and which it would be folly to 
expect in the period with which we are con- 
cerned. 

The teaching, however, of the Apostles of 
Mediaeval Europe, so far as it has come down 
to us, had one great merit. From first to last 
it was eminently objective. It dealt mainly 
with the great facts of Christianity. It pro- 
claimed the incarnation of the Saviour, his 



134 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, 
his future coming to judge the quick and dead, 
and then it proceeded to treat of the good 
works which ought to flow from the vital re- 
ception of these Christian truths. 

To the Celtic worshippers of the powers of 
nature, and especially of the sun, we saw how 
the Apostle of Ireland proclaimed the existence 
of one God, the Creator of all things, and then 
proceeded to dwell upon the life, death, resur- 
rection, and ascension of his only-begotten 
Son, Jesus Christ, whom he declared to be the 
true Sun, of whom, and by whom, and to 
whom, are all things. 

Similarly we saw how Augustine directed 
the attention of the royal worshipper of Odin 
and Thor in Kent to the picture of the Saviour 
on the cross, and then told him of such events 
in his wondrous life as were likely to make an 
impression on his mind; how at his birth a star 
appeared in the East; how he walked upon the 
sea; how at his death the sun withdrew his 
shining; how at his resurrection the earth 
trembled and the rocks were rent ; how, having 
been looked for as the Great Deliverer of man- 
kind from the beginning of the world, and 
having sealed his mission as divine, he as- 
cended up on high, and was now worshipped 
everywhere as the only-begotten Son of God. 1 

1 Compare " Vita S. Augustin." Migne, " Patro- 
logia," Seec. vii. p. 61. 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 135 

The sermon of Gallus on the occasion of the 
consecration of his disciple to the see of Con- 
stance is interesting from the testimony it 
bears to his intimate acquaintance with the 
Old Testament history, and the order of the 
events in the Saviour's life, and the knowl- 
edge it displays is far in advance of that 
which is popularly ascribed to the period in 
which he lived. 

The correspondence of Daniel, bishop of 
Winchester, with his friend and fellow-coun- 
tryman St. Boniface, is peculiarly deserving 
of notice, as illustrating the way in which he 
would have him deal with the errors and 
superstitions of their Teutonic kinsmen, and 
win them over to the right faith. If from 
this prudent advice we turn to the fifteen 
sermons of the great Apostle of Germany 
which have been preserved to us, 1 we have 
ample proof that he desired something far 
more real than a mere superficial form of 
Christian belief. 

The first of these treats of the right faith, of 
the doctrine of the Trinity, the relation of 
baptism to the remission of sins, the resurrec- 
tion of the dead, the future judgment, and the 
necessity of repentance. 

The second, preached on Christmas Day, is 
concerned with the creation of man, the his- 
tory of his fall, the promise of a Saviour, and 
his first Advent in great humility. 

i Migne, M Patrologia Latina," Saec. viii. p. 813. 



136 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

The third has for its subject the twofold 
operation of justification. 

The fourth treats of the Beatitudes. 

The fifth of faith and the works of love. 

The sixth, 'seventh, eighth, and ninth of 
deadly sins and the Ten Commandments. 

The tenth and eleventh are mainly concerned 
with further explanations of man's original 
state, of his fall and redemption through 
Christ, of the hope of the world to come, and 
the necessity of preparation by leading a 
fresh and holy life for the Day of Judgment. 
The subject of the twelfth and thirteenth is 
an explanation of the necessity of observing 
the season of Lent; while the fourteenth is an 
Easter sermon. 

The last appears to have been preached on 
the occasion of the celebration of the Sacra- 
ment of Baptism, and illustrates the simple 
missionary character of the rest. 

"Listen, my brethren/' it begins, 'and 
consider attentively what it was ye renounced 
at your baptism. Ye renounced the devil and 
all his works. What are the works of the 
devil ? They are pride, idolatry, envy, back- 
biting, lying, perjury, hatred, variance, forni- 
cation, adultery, theft, drunkenness, sorcery, 
witchcraft, recourse to amulets and charms. 
These and such like are the works of the devil, 
and all such ye renounced at your baptism, 
and, as the Apostle saith, ' They who do such 
things are worthy of death, and shall not enter 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 137 

into the kingdom of heaven.' But because we 
believe that through God's mercy ye renounce 
all these sins in heart and life, therefore, 
that ye may deserve to obtain pardon, I warn 
you, brethren beloved, to remember what ye 
promised unto God Almighty. 

"For ye promised to believe in God Al- 
mighty, and in Jesus Christ his Son, and in 
the Holy Spirit, One God Almighty in a perfect 
Trinity. 

"These are the commandments of God, 
which we ought to observe and keep : ye must 
love the Lord, in whom ye have professed 
your belief, with all your heart, and mind, and 
strength. Be ye patient, tender-hearted, kind, 
chaste, and pure. Teach your children to love 
God, and your household in like manner. 
Reconcile them that are at variance. Lest him 
that judges give righteous judgment, let him 
not receive bribes, for bribes blind the eyes 
even of the wise. 

"Observe the Lord's Day, assemble your- 
selves at church, and there pray, not making 
vain repetitions. Give alms according to your 
means, for as water extinguished the flame, so 
almsgiving blotteth out sin. Observe hospi- 
tality, visit the sick, minister to widows and 
orphans, give tithes to the Church, and what 
ye would not men should do unto you, that do 
ye not unto them. Fear God, and him only. 
Servants, be obedient unto your masters, and 
maintain the rights of your master among your 



138 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

fellow- servants. Learn diligently the Lord's 
Prayer and the Creed, and teach them to your 
children, and to those for whom ye stood 
sponsors at their baptism. Practise fasting, 
love righteousness, resist the devil, receive the 
Eucharist at the stated seasons. These, and 
such like, are the commands that God bade 
you do and keep. 

"Believe that Christ will come, that there 
will be a resurrection of the body, and a general 
judgment of mankind. Then the wicked will 
be separated from the good, and the one will 
go into eternal fire, the other into eternal bliss, 
and they shall enjoy everlasting life with God 
without any more death, light without dark- 
ness, health without sickness, happiness with- 
out fear, joy without sorrow; there shall be 
peace for evermore, and the righteous shall 
shine forth as the sun, for eye hath not seen, 
nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the 
heart of man to conceive, what things God hath 
prepared for them that love him." 1 

Such was the missionary instruction which 
the Apostle of Germany imparted to his flock. 

Further information on the same point is 
supplied by the correspondence of Alcuin with 
the emperor Charlemagne, who had entrusted 
Arno, archbishop of Salzburg, with a mission 
amongst the Avars. He congratulates the 
emperor on his success and the prospect of the 

i 1 Cor. ii. 9. 



OF MEDIEVAL EUKOPE. 139 

speedy spread of the faith, but impresses upon 
him the necessity for due attention to public 
preaching and an orderly celebration of bap- 
tism. l A mere external washing of the body, 
he reminds him, will avail nothing, unless the 
mind has first duly received. 

"The Apostolic order, " he observes, "is 
first to teach all nations, then is to follow the 
administration of baptism and further instruc- 
tion in Christian duties. Therefore in teaching 
those of riper years, that order should be 
strictly observed, which the blessed Augustine 
has laid down in his treatise on the very 
subject : 2 

"1. First, a man ought to be instructed in 
the immortality of the soul, in the future life, 
and its retribution hereafter of good and evil. 

1 ■ 2. Secondly, he ought to learn for what 
crimes and sins he will be condemned to 
future punishment, and for what good and 
beneficial actions he will enjoy eternal happi- 
ness with Christ. 

" 3. Thirdly, he ought to be very carefully 
instructed in the doctrine of the Trinity, in the 
advent of the Saviour for the salvation of 
mankind, in his life, his passion, his resurrec- 
tion, his ascension, and future coming to 
judge the world. Strengthened and thoroughly 
instructed in this faith, let him be baptized, 



1 See Migne, " Patrologia," Saec, ix. p. 187. 
9 "De Cateehizandis Rudibus." 



140 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

and afterwards let the precepts of the Gospel 
be further unfolded by public preaching till 
he attain to the measure of the stature of a 
perfect man, and become a worthy habitation 
for the Holy Ghost." 

In another letter, after exhorting the em- 
peror to provide competent instructors for his 
newly - conquered subjects, he remarks that 
they ought to follow the example of the 
Apostles in preaching the word of God. " For 
they," he says, " were wont at the beginning 
to feed their hearers with milk, that is, with 
gentle precepts, even as the Apostle Paul 
saith : And I, brethren, could not speak unto 
you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even 
as unto babes in Christ, 1 have fed you with 
milk, and not with meat : for hitherto ye were 
not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. 1 
And thereby that great Apostle of the whole 
world, Christ speaking in him, signified, that 
newly-converted tribes ought to be nourished 
with simple precepts, like as children are with 
milk, lest if austerer precepts be taught at 
first, their weak mind should reject what it 
drinks. Whence also the Lord Jesus Christ 
himself in the Gospel replied to those asking 
him why his disciples fasted not : Men put 
not new wine into old bottles: else the bottles 
break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles 
perish ; but they put new wine into new bottles, 

1 1 Cor. iii. 1, 3, 



OP MEDIJEVAL EUROPE., 141 

andbothare preserved; l ' for,' as Jerome saith, 
* tlie virgin purity of the soul which has never 
been contaminated with vice is very different 
from that which has long been in bondage to 
foul lusts and passions.' " 

III. And here a few remarks on the policy 
of the missionaries as regards heathenism may 
not be out of place, especially as they have 
sometimes been accused of too great accommo- 
dation to the weaknesses and scruples of their 
pagan converts. 

A review of the efforts made during this 
period does not tend to substantiate the charge 
at least against the missionaries themselves. 
Again and again we have seen them hewing 
down the images, profaning the temples, and 
protesting with vehemence against sorcery, 
witchcraft, and other heathen practices. The 
Apostle of Ireland did not, as we saw, spare 
the great object of Celtic worship ; his country- 
men, Columbanus and Gallus, provoked the 
grievous wrath of the Suevians by their hos- 
tility to Thor and Odin ; Willibrord, at the 
peril of his life, polluted the sacred fountains 
of Fosites-land ; Boniface risked not only 
personal safety, but all his influence over the 
people of Hesse by hewing down the sacred 
oak of Geismar ; the address of Lebuin to the 
Saxon assembly did not betray one easily 
" shaken by the wind ; " Bogoris flung away 

i Matt, ix. 17, 



142 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

his idols at the first request of Methodius ; 
Vladimir flogged the huge image of Peroun, 
and flung it into the waters of the Dnieper be- 
fore the face of his people ; Olaf and Thang- 
brand overthrew the monuments of Scandi- 
navian idolatry with a zeal worthy of a Jehu ; 
Bishop Otho in Pomerania insisted, in spite of 
imminent danger to himself, on destroying 
various Sclavonic temples. 

As far as such external protests against idol- 
atry could avail, their missionary zeal did not 
err on the side of laxity. It cannot be said 
that there was any accommodation here to the 
views of the heathens, or anything like the 
policy of the unworthy followers of Xavier in 
India. 

In several cases, however, the advice of 
Gregory the Great to Augustine appears to 
have been mainly followed, at least by the 
Anglo-Saxon missionaries. From the letter of 
that Pope to Mellitus 1 it seems that the ques- 
tion of the destruction of the heathen temples 
had caused him considerable anxiety, and had 
long occupied his thoughts. The conclusion 
to which he at last came was that, instead of 
being destroyed, they should be "cleansed 
from heathen pollution by being sprinkled with 
holy water," and consecrated to Christian pur- 
poses by the erection of the Christian altar and 
the " deposition of relics of the saints." 

1 Epp. Greg. lib. xi. 76; Bede, i. 30, " Diu mecumde 
causa Anglorum cogitans tractavi," 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 143 

Whatever may be the reason of the strange 
contrast between the policy advocated in this 
letter and in that addressed to Ethelbert, it is 
certain that Gregory was wisely anxious to 
facilitate the transition from heathenism to 
Christianity. In this spirit, therefore, he ad- 
vised Augustine to deal cautiously with the 
heathen festivals which were celebrated in or 
near the temples; he would not have them 
abolished altogether, but suggested that on 
the aniversaries of the Martyrs, whose relics 
had been placed in the temples now converted 
into churches, booths should be erected, and the 
people permitted to celebrate their feasts in 
honour not of the old pagan deities, but of the 
True God, the Giver of all good. 

Gregory, whose spirit is said to have yearned 
towards the old heathen sages who had died 
without hearing of the work of Christ, con- 
sidered that he had found a precedent for the 
advice he now gave in the divine system of 
educating the Jewish people after their de- 
parture from Egypt. ll They had been wont," 
he remarks, "to sacrifice to false gods; they 
were not forbidden now altogether to abstain 
from offering sacrifice. The object only of 
their worship was changed, and the same ani- 
mals they had ^been wont to sacrifice to idols, 
they now sacrificed in honour of the Lord 
their God." 

Grant that he may have regarded the Jew- 
ish sacrificial system from far toe low a point 



144 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

of view, still, in the circumstances of the 
Anglo-Saxons just emerging from heathenism, 
there was much to remind him of the Jewish 
nation in its long contact with idolatry in 
Egypt. The latter, unfitted, as the very genius 
of their language attests, for abstract thought 
or metaphysical speculations, absolutely re- 
quired material symbols, and with a Book of 
Symbols they were mercifully provided. 

The same mode of proceeding, Gregory was 
of opinion, was requisite in the case of the 
Anglo-Saxon converts, and if existing cere- 
monies conld only be exalted and purified, a 
gradual ascent might be supplied towards 
understanding higher truths. Where, as in 
England, and probably on the Continent, every 
town had its religious establishment, the Me- 
diaeval missionaries, themselves in many cases 
but lately converted, may be pardoned for the 
natural desire to make as much as possible of 
the religio loci, and to avail themselves, so far 
as it was practicable, of old associations. 

Architectural reasons may very probably 
have prevented in many cases a compliance 
with Gregory's advice, but its spirit was 
obeyed, wherever the Teutonic missionary 
went forth to evangelize Teutons. And in- 
dependently of the sound principle which was 
thus taught, 4 ' that the evil spirit can be cast 
out of institutions without destroying them," 
the early missionaries must have found that it 
is easy to destroy the image or fling it into the 



OF MEDIJEVAL EUROPE. 145 

stream, but very hard to extirpate a faith, and 
eradicate time-honoured superstitions. 

They to whom they preached were, as we 
have already seen, worshippers of all above 
them and around them ; in the skies, the 
woods, the waters, they found their oracles 
and sacred books; they revelled in spirits 
of the grove and of the fountain, of the 
lake and of the hill ; they believed de- 
voutly in divinations, and presages, and 
lots. Imagine, then, one who from his earliest 
years had lived and moved in the atmos- 
phere of a faith like this, which identi- 
fied itself with all the associations of nature 
and the world around, which taught him to 
hear voices from another world in the forest 
roaring around his cottage in the wintry night, 
or on the lake where he flung his net ; — imagine 
such an one, out of deference to the will of his 
chief, or the stern command of the conqueror, 
in an age of "implicit, childlike, trusting, 
fearing, rejoicing faith," exchanging his early 
creed for that of the Christian; and can we 
wonder that the old ideas long retained their 
sway, or that councils were obliged to de- 
nounce, and the missionary to inveigh against, 
lingering traces of well- worship and tree- 
worship, against divination and witchcraft ? 

Can we wonder that in an age when the old 
divinities were still regarded as real powers, 
which were not entirely bereft of all influence 
over their apostate votaries, even after^they 



146 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

had bowed before the uplifted cross, or been 
signed with the same symbol in the baptismal 
stream, the missionary was tempted, almost 
unconsciously, to meet heathenism halfway, 
and to Christianize superstitions he found him- 
self powerless to dispel ? 

Can we wonder that many, unable to resist 
the glamour of old beliefs, in the midst of 
which their forefathers " had lived and moved 
and had their being, " were still prone at times 
to offer the ancient sacrifices, and, as we gather 
from the letters of Boniface, to resort to the 
old magic and soothsaying ? When we remem- 
ber that as late as the fifteenth century the 
Church was engaged in eradicating the re- 
mains of Sclavonic heathenism, and protesting 
against a rude fetishism and serpent worship, 
it is surely no matter of surprise that the 
boundary line between the old and the new 
faith was not very sharply defined, that a con- 
tinual interchange long went on between Chris- 
tian legends and heathen myths. 

It was no settled policy on the part of the 
forefathers of European civilization, but the 
spirit of the age itself, which refused to dis- 
join the judicial assembly from its old accom- 
panying heathen rites ; which kept heathen 
festivals on Christian holidays, and celebrated 
heathen festivals, purified of their grosser 
elements, under a Christian guise ; which ex- 
changed the remembrance cup once drunk at 
the banquet in honour of Thor and Woden 



OF MEDIAEVAL ETJBOPE. 147 

for a similar salutation of the Apostles, and 
in place of the image of Frigga caused the 
staff of some saint to be carried round the 
cornfields to drive away the fieldmice or the 
caterpillars ; which preserved the heathen 
names of the days of the week, and inextrica- 
bly united the name of a Saxon goddess with 
the most joyous of the Christian festivals : 
names which have survived all the interven- 
ing changes of thought and feeling, and 
remain to the present day the undying memo- 
rials of the period of twilight between hea- 
thendom and Christianity. 

IV. Our retrospect has, from the nature of 
the case, been chiefly concerned with the more 
legitimate efforts made during the earlier 
period of the Middle Ages to propagate the 
Gospel. But during the latter period we no- 
ticed how other agencies besides the holy lives 
and eloquent tongues of devoted men, besides 
the monastic colony and the missionary school, 
were employed to complete the circle of Euro- 
pean Christendom. We saw how the genuine 
missionary spirit became tinged with fanati- 
cism, and was succeeded by violent and coer- 
cive propagandism. 

Whenever the Church effected anything 
real or lasting, it was when she was content 
to persevere in a spirit of absolute dependence 
on Him who has promised to be with her al- 
ways, even unto the end of the world; when in 
the person of a Columba, a Boniface, a Sturmi, 



148 MISSIONS AND APOSTLES 

an Anskar, a Raymund Lull, she was con- 
tented to go forth and sow the seed, and then 
leave it to do its work, remembering that if 
" earthly seed is long in springing up, imper- 
ishable seed is longer still." Whenever she 
failed in her efforts, it was when she forgot 
in whose strength she went forth, and for 
whose glory alone she existed, when she was 
tempted to resort to other means and to try 
other expedients than those which her great 
Head had sanctioned when, instead of patient- 
ly leaving the good seed to grow of itself, she 
strove to hurry its development, and was im- 
patient of small beginnings and weak instru- 
ments. 

For if the retrospect of the missionary ef- 
forts of the Middle Ages teaches one lesson 
more than another, it is the value of those 
" slender wires " on which the greatest events 
are often hung, and the importance of not de- 
spising the day of small things. " Let any 
one," writes the author of the "Historical 
Memoirs of Canterbury," " sit on the hill of 
the little Church of St. Martin at Canterbury, 
and look on the view which is there spread 
before his eyes. Immediately below are the 
towers of the great Abbey of St. Augustine, 
where Christian learning and civilization first 
struck root in the Anglo-Saxon race ; and 
within which now, after a lapse of many cen- 
turies, a new institution has arisen, intended 
to carry far and wide, to countries of which 



OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 149 

Gregory and Augustine had never heard, the 

blessings which they gave to us From 

Canterbury, the first English Christian city — 
from Kent, the first English Christian king- 
dom — has, by degrees, arisen the whole con- 
stitution of a Church and State in England, 
which now binds together the whole British 
Empire. And from the Christianity here es- 
tablished in England has flowed, by direct 
consequence, first, the Christianity of Ger- 
many — then, after a long interval, of North 
America, — and lastly, we may trust, in time, 
of all India and Australasia. The view from 
St. Martin's Church is indeed one of the most 
in spiriting that can be found in the world ; 
there is none to which I would more willingly 
take any one who doubted whether a small 
beginning would lead to a great and lasting 
good, — none which carries us more vividly 
back to the past, or more hopefully forward 
to the future." l 

1 Stanley's " Memorials of Canterbury," p. 39. „ 



Small 18mo. Cloth extra, 50 cents each; Leather, 60 cents, 

Special rates will be allowed on orders for large 
quantities. 



THE MODERN READER'S BIBLE. 

A Series of Books from the Sacred Scriptures, 
presented in Modern Literary Form, 



RICHARD G. MOULTON, 

M.A. (Camb.), Ph.D. (Penn.), 

Professor of Literature in English in the University 

of Chicago. 



THE CLERGY OF THE UNITED STATES, 

whether engaged in pastoral or educational work, are 
respectfully requested to examine this important work, 
with a view to its use among- the young- people of the 
church or school. Single volumes will make very ac- 
ceptable and yet inexpensive Christmas gifts or prizes; 
especially will those books of the Bible from which the 
Sunday-school Lessons of the current quarter are taken 
serve as appropriate reminders of the lessons taught. 

The undertaking is receiving strong indorsements 
from many quarters. For example, the 

RIGHT REV. HENRY C. POTTER, 

Bishop of the Diocese of New York % 

who rarely consents to such a use of his name, author- 
izes us to say to you that he considers it 

" altogether admirable and of especial value" 



For further information, address 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YOBK. 



The order in which it is proposed to issue the 
volumes is as follows : 

WISDOM SERIES. 

IN FOUR VOLUMES. 

THE PROVERBS. 

A Miscellany of Sayings and Poems embodying 
Isolated Observations of Life. Ready. 

ECCLESIASTICUS. 

A Miscellany including longer compositions, still 
embodying only Isolated Observations of Life. 

Ready. 

ECCLESIASTES — WISDOM OF SOLO- 
MON. 

Each is a Series of Connected Writings embodying, 
from different standpoints, a solution of the Whole 
Mystery of Life. Ready, 

THE BOOK OF JOB. 

A Dramatic Poem in which are embodied Varying 
Solutions of the Mystery of Life. Ready, 



DEUTERONOMY. 

The Orations and Songs of Moses, constituting his 
Farewell to the People of Israel. Ready. 

BIBLICAL IDYLS. 

The Lyric Idyl of Solomon's Song, and the Epic 
Idyls of Ruth, Esther, and Tobit. Ready. 



HISTORY SERIES. 

IN FIVE VOLUMES. 

GENESIS. 

Bible History, Part I: Formation of the Chosen 
Nation. Ready, 



THE EXODUS. 

Bible History, Part II: Migration of the Chosen 
Nation to the Land of Promise. — Book of Exodus, 
with Leviticus and Numbers. Ready. 

THE JUDGES. 

Bible History, Part III : The Chosen Nation in its 
Efforts towards Secular Government. — Books of 
Joshua, Judges, I Samuel. Ready. 

THE KINGS. 

Bible History, Part IV: The Chosen Nation under 
a Secular Government side by side with a Theoc- 
racy.— Books of II Samuel, I and II Kings. Ready. 

THE CHRONICLES. 

Ecclesiastical History of the Chosen Nation.— 
Books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah. 



PROPHECY SERIES. 

IN FOUR VOLUMES. 

ISAIAH. EZEKIEL. 

JEREMIAH. THE MINOR PROPHETS. 



Announcements as to further issues will be made 
from time to time. Send fifty cents for a copy of any 
volume now ready, and give it a careful examination. 
Its convenient size and exceptionally attractive form 
will lead you to subscribe for the entire series. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 



THE MODERN READER'S BIBLE. 



EDITED BY 



Dr. RICHARD G. MOULTON, 

University of Chicago, 



Single volumes, cloth, 50 cents each ; 
leather, 60 cents each. 



Rev. Dr. LYMAN ABBOTT, Editor-in-Chief of the 
OUTLOOK, writes : 

" I had intended to write to Professor Moulton, con- 
gratulating him on this work. It may almost be said 
that he has inaugurated a new epoch in Bible study. 
The scholars have been telling us for some years that 
the Bible is literature. Particular passages of beauty 
in it have been pointed out, and some single books, 
such as Job and the Song of Songs, have been put in 
literary form and given a literary interpretation by 
special writers. But Professor Moulton is the first one, 
so far as I know, to deal with the whole Bible as a col- 
lection of literature, to discriminate between literary 
study and historico-critical study, and to present the 
results of the former in such a form as to render them 
available to the ordinary English reader. The low 
price of the little volumes puts them within the reach 
of the great majority of American households, and I 
look for a large increase of interest in the Bible, for a 
much better understanding of its general spirit and 
teaching, and especially for an increased appreciation 
of its inspirational power, from the publication of the 
Modern Reader's Bible/' 



PRESS NOTICES, 



THE MODERN READER'S BIBLE. 

The world has waited over long for this treatment of 
the Scriptures. . . . The books gathered into the Old 

Testament constitute by far the most im- 
Godey'S portant part of the Bible (from a literary- 

Magazine, point of view), and they make up a body 

of work whose breadth and depth and 
height are hardly rivalled, certainly not surpassed, in 
the whole world-literature. . . . The purpose of Dr. 
Moulton's series is just this exposition of the strictly 
literary value of the Scriptures. . . . His book has the 
definite aim of supplying what the common editions of 
the Bible do not furnish. 



THE WISDOM SERIES. 

This first volume is ample evidence that the whole 
series will prove of capital importance. Professor 

Moulton's Introduction discusses 
The Evangelist, the Wisdom Literature, the princi- 
Kew York. pies underlying it, the progress of 

thought found in the four works, 
Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus, Eeclesiastes, and Wisdom of 
Solomon, which will form the first series of the Modern 
Reader's Bible, and then proceeds to an admirable in- 
troductory study of the first of the series. 

11 The Wisdom Series M does not treat the points of 

the text critically, but in a literary 

Methodist Maga- way, to bring out the larger and 

Zine and Review, deeper meanings. They are 

printed so as to show the poetical 

forms that are more characteristic of modern poetry. 



PROVERBS. 

A suggestive and valuable arrangement of the Book 
— _. Ynrlc °* P roverDS - ... As the Proverbs 

nhftPrrrpr have looked out upon us from these 

uoserver. pages, they have seemed to take on 

new force and point. 



ECCLESIAST1CUS. 

The student of the Bible will take great pleasure in 
the study of this little volume, and it will reward him 

richly. . . . The book deals prin- 
The Christian cipally with the applications of ethi- 
Advocate. cal ideas to conduct. There is an 

essay on duties to parents, others 
on duties to the poor, and one on the general duties of 
a householder, including observances of religion, char- 
ity, and social intercourse. 

ECCLESIASTES ^AND THE WISDOM 
OF SOLOMON. 

This suggestive little book cannot be perused with- 
out interest and profit. As an appreciation of the two 

writings with which it deals, it is 
The Presbyterian simply admirable; the aim of the 
Review. editor . . . has been rarely well 

achieved. By all means let this 
little book be read, and also the companion volumes. 
The "History" and "Prophecy' 1 Series will be greeted 
with a special welcome by many. It may be added that 
these brief manuals, besides being exceedingly tasteful 
in appearance, are very convenient in size, and are sup- 
plied with ample indices. 

DEUTERONOMY. 

His Introduction is an explanation and appreciation, 
not a criticism ; and certainly no one, after reading it, 
can fail to share the editor's en- 
The Congregation- thusiasm for the high literary 
alist, Boston. quality of these farewell orations 

of Moses. The usefulness and 
value of this series is well shown in the skilful editing 
and helpful presentation of this particular book. 



THE BOOK OF JOB. 

The Introductory Essay is delightfully illuminating 
and suggestive, and the notes are 

The Watchman, sagacious and learned. No one can 

Boston. fail to derive a new sense of the dig- 

nity, profundity, and symmetry of 

this wonderful poem from the critical treatment here 

applied to it. 

It is the best edition we have seen of perhaps the 
greatest poem in all literature, 
The Congregation- which should be read and re- 
alist, Boston. read as a whole, with the edi- 
tor's help and guidance. It is of 
the most fascinating interest. 



BIBLICAL IDYLS : Song of Solomon, Ruth, 
the Book of Esther, and the Book of Tobit. 

In substance, the author's aim is to give the best 
translation possible of the different books, preserving 
the spirit of the original, in the most 
Cumberland approved modern literary style. 

Presbyterian. The beauty of such an arrangement 

can well be appreciated, and one 
needs but to look at a volume so artistic in form and 
substance to feel a longing for further acquaintance 
with other numbers of the series. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 



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